Introduction Defining Greece in Time and Space

GEORGE FINLAYS GREECE:
BETWEEN EAST AND WEST
SENIOR THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

BY CHRISTOPHER SZABLA
SPRING 2007
PROFESSOR SUSAN PEDERSEN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Defining Greece in Time and Space
CHAPTER I
Speculation:
European Ideas of Greece, 1800-1830
10
Formulation:
George Finlays Ideas for Greece, 1830-1850
27
Revolution:
The Reshaping of the Greek Constitution, 1843-1864
42
Reversion:
The Re-Orientalization of Greece, 1864-1875
64
EPILOGUE
Which Way West?
73
APPENDIX
Schematic of Westernization Schemes for Greece
76
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
ii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank, first and foremost, my advisor, Susan Pedersen, for her valuable insight,
thorough critiques, and continuous encouragement. Other professors who helped contribute
sources or ideas, including Mark Mazower and Emma Winter, also merit mention. Nor could I
fail to credit professors such as Rashid Khalidi and Richard Bulliet, whose courses helped shape
the framework of this project.
I would also like to acknowledge the input of my Non-U.S. Thesis Seminar peers. It was not easy
helping one another when our group was merely defined by what we are not, but the advice of
someone with no prior knowledge of ones topic is usually the most illuminating of all.
The History Department deserves thanks for granting me research funds, though I never wound
up using them. The good people of LaptopMD, who only charged me an arm and a leg to recover
my notes when my computer crashed, at least saved me some time and effort. Last but not least, I
would like to salute the Dark Roast blend served at Butler Librarys Blue Java caf. This thesis
would not have been possible without a practically toxic number of daily (and nightly) doses of
its hypercaffeinated awesomeness.
iii
INDEX OF IMAGES
Koulouma, the first day of Lent, at the
columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus
in Athens by Christian Perlberg (oil, 1838)
Cover
Athens by J. C. Hobhouse (1813)
12
The Upper Bazaar of Athens by Edward

Dodwell (1805)
12
The Expulsion of King Otto (colour lithograph,

1862)
63
Session of the Parliament, with Harilaos Trikoupis

at the podium by N. Orlof (oil, late 19th century)
63
iv
Introduction: Defining Greece in Time and Space
WHERE IS EUROPE? Is there a West? Are these categories static, and, if so, can a
state or people be made Western or European? Since the end of the Cold War, the so-called
Westernization of much of the former Soviet bloc, the rapid expansion of the European Union,
and the use of divisive, clash of civilizations rhetoric have made these questions increasingly
relevant. It is in light of such developments that the fluctuation and instability of cultural
categories such as Europe and West must be investigated.1
The debate over whether Turkey could ever be considered European is one recent
example of such cultural categories indefinite nature. Despite efforts, from the time of Mustafa
Kemal Atatrk on, to Westernize it, the country is often still described as a bridge between
cultures, if not consigned to the alien realm of the Islamic East.2 Although it lies along the
same geographical fault line and shares a considerable amount of history with the territories that
now compose Turkey, however, contemporary Greece is rarely subjected to such questions.3
Yet, while ancient Greek culture and thought is lauded by traditionalists in Europe and
America alike as the wellspring of Western civilization, modern Greece has not always been
considered part of Europe or the West. Only formally ushered into the European Community
1
One work in which these questions have been addressed is Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, Myth of Continents: A
Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), which traces the historical evolution of
spatial and cultural constructions of East and West. See especially Chapters 2 and 3.
2
For exemplary bridge rhetoric, see Stephen Kinzer, Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds (New York:
Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 2002). Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), is generous to Turkey on neither account; it represents for him not a bridge
nor any one civilization, but a precarious fault line primed for disastrous division.
3
Suzanne Marchand, Down From Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany 1750-1970 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2003): xxii is one exception in that she briefly notes that the West in the context of
Greece was not a fixed, stable concept before deferring to Martin Bernal and Edward Said. Another can be
found in K. E. Fleming, Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography, The American Historical Review
105, no. 4 (October 2000): 1218-1233, which notes the decoupling of Greece from the more orientalized
category of the Balkans. Betty Dobratz concedes that Greece has a split identity, she achieves this solely by
caricaturing various East or West aspects of Greek political life. See Vorgos A. Kourvetaris and Betty A.
Dobratz, A Profile of Modern Greece: in Search of Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
v
in 1981, Greece was, even then, accepted less for its contemporary achievements than its
classical heritage.4 Still, this event constituted a sense of arrival for many Greeks, who had been
struggling with the question of how to achieve European-ness since their predecessors first
erupted in armed rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in 1821.
When independence alone failed to bring Greece into the West, one British historian
and journalist, George Finlay, proposed a means to actively Westernize the country, and
rewrote Greek history in the process. This thesis is an examination of his efforts, their origins,
and their consequences. It demonstrates the existence of a pan-European discourse, inherited by
Finlay, of the Westernization of Greece, traces the influence on contemporary politics of his
use of this discourse and of his novel approach to history, and, finally, argues that Finlays work
helps reveal the fundamental instability (and inscrutability) of the West as a concept.
Greece is East, West is Best: Cultural Categorization to 1842

The idea that Greece could be Westernized did not emerge until the 18th century.
During the Renaissance, Europeans appreciated classical Greece, but neglected the territory in
which it flowered. Early modern Greece still had much in common with the Byzantine period,
when Greek culture actively marked itself off from the Latin-rite lands of Western Europe.5 The
country had been, moreover, under Ottoman rule from 1460 onward, and, hence, even more
categorically isolated from Europe.6
Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 2. As late as 1982,
scholars were cataloguing cultural components which differentiated Greece from the West. See the studies quoted
in Kourvetaris and Dobratz, A Profile of Modern Greece, 2-8.
5
Clogg, Concise History, 3. Copernican astronomy, for example, was not accepted by the Orthodox Christian
establishment until the 1790s.
6
Until the end of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, Greece was unavoidably positioned on maps of the Near East (see
Fleming, Orientalismand Balkan Historiography, 1228). Richard Bulliet cites the idea of Byzanto-Muslim
Civilization, referenced by Oswald Spengler in his Decline of the West as Magian. See The Case for IslamoChristian Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004): 11.
vi
th
In the 18 century, a new conception of Greece, as the birthplace of Western

Civilization, emerged. This movement, Hellenism,7 was rooted in the romantic nationalisms
of Scotland and Germany, which sought cultural and biological ties to ancient Greece. German
university seminars were organized in order to teach the history of Greece as that of the
childhood of Europe. In time, Western European intellectuals, and the Greeks they were
beginning to educate in their universities, came to wonder why Greeces historical legacy had
contributed to the flourishing of Britain, France, and Germany, rather than Greece itself.
Historians of Greece deplored the medievalism of the Byzantine period and blamed the
Ottoman Empire vilified for centuries in the persona of the hated Turk for Greeces lack of
exposure to the ideas of the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, or the French Revolution.8
Free Greece from the Ottoman yoke, they reasoned, and the country would resume its place
among the intellectual, artistic, and economic leaders of Europe.
In 1821, Greece erupted in rebellion. While the War of Independence was not fought to
win the countrys readmission to the West, intellectuals in Greece and elsewhere took up the
cause in that spirit. Many even joined the fight. From Germany and elsewhere on the Continent,
hundreds of students poured south to help assist the uprising. Britain also contributed a coterie of
adventurers to the cause. Lord Byron took part, as did Finlay. Unlike the Germans, the British
contingent did not cultivate fantasies of classical Athens instant resurrection. Nevertheless, they
shared with the Continental enthusiasts, in contrast to the antiquarian prejudices of Hellenism, a
Philhellenism concerned with the uplift of Greece in the present.9 In the capitals of Western
7
Also referred to as neoclassicism or Neo-Hellenism.

Clogg, Concise History, 2.
9
This is my distinction, earlier proposed in Vangelis Calotychos, Modern Greece: a Cultural Poetics (Oxford: Berg,
2003): 237. Some have attributed the term Philhellenism to a general affection for Greece, but it is most often
used in the context of the supporters of Greek independence. In Marchard, Down from Olympus, 33, this definition
is termed political philhellenism. Mere Hellenism, meanwhile, almost always refers to a solely antiquarian
concern with Greece.
8
vii
Europe, meanwhile, utilitarian thinkers were plotting a future for Greece divorced from its
history and culture entirely; they sought to bring about a Greek revival on the basis of abstract
political and economic theory alone.
Post-independence Greece failed, however, to live up to high hopes and expectations of
these groups. Shock radiated through the academies of Germany when independent Greece did
not germinate the kind of artistic and philosophical Renaissance expected to follow upon its
liberation. Philhellenes quit the country in droves as daily life proved chronically unstable. To
the surprise of these mostly liberal men, Greece emerged neither democratic nor independent,
but was ruled by the interests of the three Great Powers Russia, Britain, and France which
had helped it achieve independence. The powers curtailed Greek territory, to maintain the
Ottoman Empire as a buffer between Russia and the Mediterranean, and placed a compliant
Bavarian on the Greek throne. Neither a parliament nor a constitution were realized.
Enter George Finlay

Though the grim spectacle of post-war Greece deterred many of its early enthusiasts, who
wrote the country off as barbaric, some still were determined to devise a means by which
Greece might Westernize. At this point, George Finlay stepped into the fray to offer his
suggestions for a more proactive approach. Born in Scotland in 1799, Finlay briefly studied law
in Glasgow before packing off to Gttingen, the powerhouse of German scholarship. Early on,
therefore, he was exposed to both the political liberalism permeating Britains Celtic Fringe
and the romantic Philhellenism engrossing the universities of Germany. He soon joined the
Germans streaming south to assist the Greek rebellion, and came under the influence of Lord
Byron, who attempted to steer the brashly idealistic Finlay toward a grounded appreciation of
viii
modern Greece and its people. Perhaps because of this or because he retained his taste for
adventure long after the conclusion of the war, Finlay preferred, unlike his contemporaries, to
remain in the battle-scarred country.
In 1842, he picked up his pen and began his literary career with a series of scathing
attacks on the state of Greece. At times, he blamed the Greek people and their government, but
ultimately sought to sway officials in London, who wielded conspicuous influence over the
nascent Greek state. His prescriptions for Greece, therefore, amounted to a scheme for the
countrys forcible Westernization, to be carried out by an exemplarily Western state.
Finlay was significant for three substantial reasons. First, he extended the discourse of
Greeces Westernization well past independence, demonstrating that a state which is
unequivocally believed part of Western Europe today was, in fact, conceived in the same
ambiguous sense as modern Turkey throughout the 19th century. Second, to move beyond the
disappointment of his fellow Philhellenes and toward a more pragmatic approach to
Westernization, Finlay redefined the way Greek history was written. He eschewed the direct
juxtaposition of classical and modern Greece. He also dismissed attempts to reform the country
by abstract political principle. Instead, he devised an approach that privileged a longue dure
examination of Greeces history in order to recover specific aspects of its classical past that had
survived the centuries, and that could be revived to serve as a basis for Westernization.10
Finally, Finlay used this rhetoric of an essential constitution to make the case for the
specifically British Westernization of Greece. Finlay argued that, like the essential constitution
of Greece, Britain possessed a constitution based on historically-proven principles of
participatory government. In Anglicizing, and, by extension, Westernizing Greece, Britain
10
See Appendix for a full schematic illustrating Finlays Westernization scheme vis--vis others.
ix
would re-seed the country with its inheritance from ancient Athens. Finlays contemporaries in
the British government took up his theories, shaping, decisively the course of Greek history.
Setting the Stage

This thesis looks at two formative periods for Finlays thought and examines a third
period in which Finlays influence over British policy was decisive. The first chapter traces
European ideas of Greece down to 1830. Early travellers to the country were puzzled by the
contrast between ancient Greece and the alien character of the countrys contemporary
inhabitants. In the early 19th century, however, German intellectuals and nationalists across
Europe became obsessed with the resurrection of classical (and indisputably European) Greece.
At the same time, Lord Byron altered British thought on Greece by expressing empathy for its
contemporary culture and people. The Greek Committees set up in European capitals, which
sought to make newly independent Greece an example of the potency of utilitarian principles of
political economy, represent another optimistic strain of thought.
Chapter Two introduces Finlays early journals, which express his disappointment with
post-independence Greece. He became increasingly disgruntled with the Bavarian regencys
policies, which oscillated between a preoccupation with Greeces classical past and the
application of new theories of administrative efficiency. Neither responded to the realities of
contemporary Greece, and friction between Greeces government and its people bred
increasingly authoritarian attempts to maintain order. Consequently, he deemed the Bavarians
approaches to Westernization a failure. Westernization had to work through the realities of
contemporary Greece, he argued; ideas of government could not simply be imported from
theoretical tracts or located in Greeces classical past. Instead, Finlay located an indigenous
x
tradition of representative government that had survived long past Greeces classical age. By
responding to citizens concerns, this government would be concerned with the problems of the
Greek present, rather than govern on the basis of an idealized past, or of de-historicized theory.
The Greek revolutions of 1843 and 1862 frame Chapter Three. The former thrilled Finlay
by introducing a nominally representative regime. The new government, however, was beset by
corruption and misrule. Finlay set about searching, as before, for a historical corrective.
Finalizing his History of Greece, he argued that, until independence, an organic constitution
had persisted in the country, marked by high levels of individual participation in local
government. Around the same time, John Stuart Mill and other British liberals likened popular
participation in Britains local government to the Athenian constitution. Finlay advocated a
re-gifting of Britains local, participatory government to its political ancestor, Greece. The
rhetoric of Greeces essential constitution, and the notion that it was Britains duty to help
restore it, permeated parliamentary deliberations on British relations with Athens. The revolution
of 1862 succeeded in implementing participatory local government in Greece. Despite a number
of possible motivations, Britain chose to support it due, possibly, to Finlays influence.
Chapter Four demonstrates how, late in his life, Finlay shifted the discourse of Greeces
cultural categorization again, painting the nascent regime Eastern. Fearing local government
had not provided the basis for economic prosperity in Greece, he abandoned his preoccupation
with local initiative, and argued for concessions to Western corporations as were granted in
Turkey, Egypt, and Persia. When Greece focused instead on territorial expansion, Finlay grew
disenchanted. With the Greek economy faltering and formerly prosperous parts of the Ottoman
Empire disrupted by Greek incursions, he re-evaluated which state was ultimately more
xi
th
Western, leading to the question, considered in the Epilogue, of what constituted, in the 19
century, joining Europe, and why this idea was (and is) so indefinite.
Examining Finlay
George Finlays journals and letters were not published until the mid-1990s, but have
never been the subject of sustained scholarly study.11 I have made liberal use of them, primarily
as background for Finlays more public work specifically, his articles in Blackwoods and his
History12 which I have marshalled in the context of the European question in Greek history.13
This account reconciles the perspectives offered by two of the few historians who have
examined Finlays journals and letters J. M. Hussey, who published many of his papers,14 and
William Miller, who catalogued them in the 1920s.15 Hussey claims that Miller concentrates far
too heavily on Finlays criticisms of Greece, and thereby misreads a complex figure.16 A close
reading of Millers work, however, reveals a more nuanced understanding. When he does expose
Finlays more critical views of the country, Miller is quite conscious of his specific motivations.
The frequency of personal calamities in Finlays life, Miller writes, should be considered in
11
Breyer asserts that manyhave used and published thematerial. Nevertheless, such use has either been partial
or tangential to, rather than directly concerned with, Finlay. See Anthony Breyer, Review of The Journals and
Letters of George Finlay by J. M. Hussey, The English Historical Review 113, no. 454 (Nov. 1998): 1345.
12
In particular, I have used Volumes VI and VII, which concern post-independence Greece. The entire History of
Greece From its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time B. C. 146 To A. D. 1864 (New York: AMS Press,
1970) runs seven volumes.
13
Breyer writes that Finlayhas still not been securely placed either in the historiography of modern Greece or as
a reflector of British policy in the new kingdom See Review of The Journals and Letters of George Finlay, 1344.
By looking at how Britons saw Greece vis--vis Europe, this thesis is primarily an attempt to address the second
deficiency.
14
Her compilations include J. M. Hussey, ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume I: The Journals
(Athens: Porphyrogenitus, 1995), and J. M. Hussey, ed. ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume II:
Finlay-Leake and Other Correspondence (Athens: Porphyrogenitus, 1995).
15
His work is summarized in three review articles: William Miller, George Finlay as a Journalist, The English
Historical Review 39, no. 156. (October 1924): 552-567; William Miller, The Finlay Papers, The English
Historical Review 39, no. 155 (July 1924): 386-398; and Miller, William. The Journals of Finlay and Jarvis in The
English Historical Review 41, no. 164 (October 1926): 514-525.
16
Hussey, Introduction in Journals, xvii.
xii
estimating his impartiality as a historian of his own time.
17
Ergo, both historians are willing to acknowledge that Finlay had a complicated view of
Greece. How, then, to explain Finlays waffling between harsh criticism and abject praise?
Conceptualizing Finlay as a Westernizer with a determined political and economic plan for the
country answers this question: he criticized Greece when it strayed from his prescribed
developmentalist path. Greece earned accolades, however, when it appeared to be taking up his
suggestions. When it appeared to do both, Finlays opinion was ambiguous. In spite of all the
awkwardness.how much progress Greece has made, he once wrote.18
I have said little, however, about the debate over Westernization among Greeks
themselves.19 This is partially because many Greeks conformed to European visions of the
West. It is also because, though the Greek revolutions of 1843 and 1862 spurred
Westernization as Finlay conceived it, they could only be upheld by the Great Powers who
held power over Greece, of which Britain was the most influential. Whatever the case, the
West was certainly a powerful magnet for Greeks. Compare the image on the cover of this
thesis, a depiction of Athens in 1838, to a view of the Greek parliament from the late 19th
century.20 Whereas in 1838 the citizens of Athens are travelling by camel and parading around in
traditional foustanellas, by the end of the century few Greek politicians who were not donning
Western suits. By persuading Britain to uphold Westernizing processes for much of the 19th
century, Finlay played a role in this change of outlook among Greeks as well.
17
Miller, Papers, 391.

Miller, Journals, 519.
19
Major debates among Westernizers and Hellenizers raged among Greeks throughout the 19th century. See
Kourvetaris and Dobratz, A Profile of Modern Greece, 2-8. See also the discussion of alafranga (Western-clothed)
versus foustanellophoroi (traditionally-clothed) men in 19th century depictions of Greece in Clogg, Concise History,
52-3. A middle ground of sorts was found in nationalist folkloric research which sought to bridge classical and
modern Greece; this is examined in detail in Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the
Making of Modern Greece (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982).
20
See page 63.
18
xiii
Chapter I. Speculation: European Ideas of Greece, 1800-1830
BY THE EARLY 19th century, Europeans had developed three lines of thought about
Greece. The first was dismissive; early travelers to the country castigated its inhabitants for
failing to live up to their schoolbooks idealized image of antiquity. In response, various groups
put forward proposals for returning Greece to the West. One such movement, Philhellenism,
included those who sympathized with the modern Greeks potential. German Philhellenes, in
particular, believed that, once the Ottoman yoke was thrown off, classical Greece would be
instantaneously resurrected. Another movement included progressive intellectuals and profiteers
who were less confident that classical Greece would somehow reassert itself, and sought instead
to use Greece as a proving ground for trendy political and economic theories.
George Finlay, born in 1799, was influenced by each of these groups. When he was 20
years old, he left his native Scotland, itself a hotbed of sympathy for Greece, for Gttingen, the
center of Philhellenism in Germany.1 By 1823, he and a group of rabid German volunteers had
sailed for Greece to assist its War of Independence. When the fighting subsided, he found that
neither reliance on classical precedent nor theoretical notions of political economy2 could bring
about Greeces revival. This chapter presents these theories and their effect on Europe in detail,
prefacing Finlays later criticisms.3
Dilettanti Amid Devastation: Early Travellers to Greece

Finlay and his fellow volunteers had high hopes for an independent Greece. Yet, for
decades before he arrived, Western Europeans travellers to the country had recorded less than
1
J. M. Hussey, Finlay, George (1799-1875), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004).
2
Entry of 20 March 1834 in J. M. Hussey ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume I: The Journals
(Athens: Porphyrogenitus, 1995): 80
3
Finlays criticisms of these theories, and the alternative he developed to them, are the subject of Chapter Two.
xiv
enthusiastic impressions. Their views were a matter of perspective; travel to Greece only
began in the 1670s. Ealier, the region had been plagued by almost ceaseless warfare between the
Ottoman Empire and Venice. Once Constantinople consolidated control, travel for trade and
leisure became relatively safe.4 At the same time, Europes classical past was becoming more
definitively historicized, with the Greek period more decisively divorced from the Roman, and
Hellenism, the interest in antiquarian Greece, began to take off.5
Pioneering French and English aristocrats began to extend their Grand Tours to Athens.
The majority were cultural dilettantes, obsessed with ruins and other antiquities particularly
those they were able to remove to their estates for civilised safekeeping.6 Interest ran high
enough that in 1762 a number of aristocrats formed a Society of Dilettanti in London to raise
funds for the collection and documentation of Greek art.7 Volumes of the societys sketchbooks
poured into Britain, influencing the designs of many a country house or public building.
These early travellers rarely gave much notice to the actual inhabitants of the country.
When they did, their thoughts were almost uniformly dismissive.8 J.C. Hobhouse contrasted the
architectural achievements of ancient Athens to the constructions of the present day. The ancient
ruins, he wrote, still retain their grandeur and grace, and towering from amidstthe miserable
David Constantine, Early Greek Travelers and the Hellenic Ideal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984):
10.
5
David Constantine, Early Greek Travelers and the Hellenic Ideal, 3. For another comprehensive account of
Western European travelers to Greece during this period see Helen Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, The Eve of the Greek
Revival: British Travelers Perceptions of Early Nineteenth-Century Greece (London: Routledge, 199l).
6
Constantine, Early Greek Travelers, 8.
7
Richard Stoneman, Land of Lost Gods: the Search for Classical Greece (London: Hutchinson, 1987): Ch. 6.
8
Contemporary classicists are often still surprised to find that modern Greece does not match the idealized images
evoked in their collective imaginations. See Bernard M. W. Knox, The Continuity of Greek Culture in John A.
Koumoulides, ed. Greece: The Legacy (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland,1998) .
xv
Early modern travellers to Greece preferred idealized landscapes of classical ruins to the degeneracy of local
Greeks, who did not seem to conform to the ideals of their history books. Above, a view of Athens by J. C.
Hobhouse, in John Cam Hobhouse, A journey through Albania, and other provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia,
to Constantinople. Second edition. (London: printed for James Cawthorn, 1813). Below, an image of orientalized
Ottoman Greece, The Upper Bazaar of Athens by Edward Dodwell (1805), from The Ottoman Period in Greek
History, http://www.ahistoryofgreece.com/turkish.htm (accessed 9 April 2007).
xvi
9
mansions of barbarians, present a grand, but melancholy spectacle. The local people,
travellers complained, were hardly Greeks at all; the fact that most described themselves as
Romans who spoke a dialect they referred to as Romanoi (both terms Byzantine holdovers)
hardly helped. British travellers mocked inhabitants ignorance of classical Greek (which was
standard in British school curricula), the ostensible depravity of the Orthodox church,10 and the
military incapacity of the Greeks in the face of Napoleons onslaught.11 Late 18th and early 19th
century travellers to Greece concluded, according to Woodhouse, that the Greeks, if Greeks
they could be called, were unworthy of their ancestors, whose true descendants were to be found
in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.12
The Greeks were well aware of the depredations of British and French elites. They
decried the plunder of antiquities, particularly the seizure of the frieze of the Parthenon by Lord
Elgin, ambassador to the Porte.13 The temple, which had withstood millennia of erosion,
disregard, and even bombardment, had been unceremoniously shorn. Not long after the marbles
were removed to Britain, a piece of sardonic graffiti appeared scrawled on the Parthenon, in
Latin: QUOD NON FECERUNT GOTI HOC FECERUNT SCOTI (What the Gods left undone
has been done by the Scots).14 Yet the Greeks nationalist belief that they were the heirs of such
monuments builders was developed in Western Europe before coming home, so to speak, to
roost. The tradition of high-handed European conscension formed the background against which
the Philhellenes and Finlay reacted.
9
C. M. Woodhouse, The Philhellenes (Rutherford, New Jersey: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971): 23.
Note that Woodhouses work is overwhelmingly Anglo-centric, and to the extent that I have relied on him, it has
solely been in the context of British Philhellenism.
10
Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 10.
11
Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 20. J.C. Hobhouse noted, underwhelmed, that the kingdom of Ulysses was surrendered
into the hands of a sergeant and seven men
12
13
The Porte refers to the Sublime Porte, a metonymy for the Ottoman government.
14
xvii
Greece, Childhood of Europe
The most immediate context for Finlays engagement with Greece was his training in the
German academy. The cultural and intellectual influence of Greece upon 18th and early 19th
century German intellectual life cannot be overstated.15 Yet, while Hellenism inspired French and
British travellers to set off for Greece directly, Germans rarely experienced the country prior to
the War of Independence.16 The German obsession with Greece was an almost purely academic
and cultural phenomenon, and Greece figured in the thinking of Wilhelm von Humboldt,
Heinrich Heine, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and others as less a real place as the natural
sunny condition of man.17 Ungrounded in the material reality of modern Greece, this mentality
inevitably contributed to erroneous beliefs about the nature of Greece and its post-Ottoman
future once the war was underway.18
German intellectuals saw Greece as both a model for, and the historical ancestor of, the
German nation. As a politically disunited yet culturally productive country, ancient Greece was
seen as highly akin to contemporary Germany.19 Moreover, German educational theorists
15
See especially Eliza May Butler, The Tyranny of Greece over Germany, a Study of the Influence Exercised by
Greek Art and Poetry over the Great German Writers of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Centuries.
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1958) and Suzanne Marchand, Down From Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in
Germany 1750-1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
16
According to Woodhouse (Philhellenes, 24), ten times as many French and British travelers experienced the
country prior to the war as Germans. One theory about this discrepancy is that the German states lacked an
aristocracy that could afford Grand Tours, another is that its academic institutions failed to develop until late in the
18th century, delaying significant interest in Greece (Constantine, Early Greek Travelers, 1-2). Others have claimed
that while Germans sought out Greece as a model, Britons sought it as an escape from the shocks of the Industrial
Revolution. See Richard Jenkyns, The German Influence Upon British Hellenism, in Evangelos Konstantinou, ed.,
Die Rezeption der Antike und der europische Philhellenismus (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1998): 170-1.
17
Constantine, Early Greek Travellers, 3. See also Marchand, Down from Olympus, 9.
818
Helen Angelomatis-Tsougarakis claims that travelers to Greece during and after the war were well prepared for
the countrys degeneracy (Eve of the Greek Revival, 87), but this account suffers from Anglo-centrism.
19
Martin Bernal, Black Athena: the Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume I: The Fabrication of
Ancient Greece: 1785-1985 (London: Free Association Books, 1987): 214. Bernals account may be seen as biased,
as its aim is to charge the 19th century European academy (and the Philhellenic movement) with writing African
influence out of European history. Nevertheless, Bernals accusations are directed at the writers of pre-classical
Greek history. I have only used his work, therefore, to make reference to his much more conventional account of
how 19th century historians came to believe that post-classical Greece begat European civilization.
xviii
speculated that studying the slow evolution of ancient Greece reduced revolutionary
tendencies among young men. Friedrich Schillers lectures on the Aesthetic Education of Man,
for example, coupled a speech on the dangers of the French Revolution with one on the
steadying effects of studying Greece.20 Greece was, therefore, useful to study both as historical
process and as an ideal toward which to aspire. Thus, Humboldt wrote that the Greeks step out
of the circle of history. Even if their destinies belong to the general chain of events...we fail
entirely to recognize our relationship to them if we dare to apply the standardswhich we apply
to the rest of world history In the Greeks alone, he concluded, we find the ideal of that
which we should like to be and produce.21 These ideas of Greece were well established at
Gttingen only a few years before Finlay arrived there, and rapidly spread to other institutions.
Nationalists across Europe also claimed legitimacy as descendants of the ancient Greeks.
Germans and Scots alike claimed Homer as an ethnic ancestor, for example, as early as the 18th
century. In the 1730s, Aberdeen scholar Thomas Blackwell frequently referred to Homer as an
aspect of the childhood of Europe.22 Another Scotsman, Robert Wood, claimed Homer was a
primitive and almost Northern bard, the poet of the childhood not only of Greece but all of
Europe.23 German philologist Friedrich August Wolf redefined Homer as a collection of
orators from whom the German people descended. The epics were too long to have been the
work of one illiterate bard, he wrote. The Homeric epics should now be seen not as the work of
a single author but as the product of the childhood of the Greek/European Volk as a body.24 The
assertion of a common European childhood helped Scots and Germans lay claim to nationalism
20
Bernal, Black Athena, 285.

Bernal, Black Athena, 287. Emphasis added.
22
Bernal, Black Athena, 207. His student, the poet James MacPherson. forged a Homeric-style epic poem by the
apocryphal Celtic bard Ossian in 1762. Advancing the notion that ancient Greek and Scottish culture were
virtually synonymous; Ossians works were still widely read in Europe fifty years later.
23
24
21
xix
as a common right of all Europeans as much for them as for independent nation-states such
as France and placed their cultural potential on the same level as ancient Greece.25
Europes common Greek heritage, then, was one basis for the assertion of nationality in
Germany and Scotland. What about Greece itself? European intellectuals came to believe that it,
too, could lay claim to European-ness; its essentially European character was merely
suppressed after centuries of Ottoman rule. When Greece was free, they claimed, culture would
flower on a classical scale. One German professor, advocating Greeces liberation, asked if any
man [could] suppress his desire to see reborn in Greece the days of liberation of Marathon and
Salamisthe blessed age when Plato listened to Socrates and when the songs of Homer and the
choruses of Socrates resounded through the court of Pericles?26 The notion that Greece could be
European spurred many to argue that this was its right. The liberation of Greece was conceived
as Europes repayment for the benefits of ancient Greeces heritage. Many German Philhellenes
argued that Europe is thankful to Greece for its culture, and, therefore, solidarity with the Greek
cause is its debt of gratitude.27 As an anonymous German pamphlet published during the time
put it: The Salvation of Greece [is] the Cause of a Thankful Europe.28
Soon, ideas of a grateful Europe expressing its thanks to Greece were accepted even
where impressions of Greece had long been dampened by successively negative travel accounts.
We should never forget that the culture of the world has only one grandmother named
Greece, said an enthusiastically Philhellenic Victor Hugo to the French Parliament.29 There is
25
Vangelis Calotychos, Modern Greece: a Cultural Poetics (Oxford: Berg, 2003): 32, paraphrases Stathis
Gourgouris on this point: Greek ideality ensures German historicity, and the colonization of this ideal [reads] a
definition of the Other for a definition of the Same.
26
David Holworth, The Greek Adventure: Lord Byron and Other Eccentrics in the War of Independence (New
York: Atheneum, 1976): 71.
27
Friedrich Hayer, Das philhellenische Argument: Europa verdankt den Griechen seine Kultur, also ist jetzt
Solidaritt mit den Griechen Dankesschuld in Rezeption der Antike.
28
Evangelos Konstantinou, Gelitwort in Rezeption der Antike, 12-13. The German reads: Die Rettung
Griechenlands, die Sache des dankbaren Europa.
29
Konstantinou, Geleitwort in Rezeption der Antike, 13.
xx
not a Heart that would not become joyful, were Greece to become free, concurred the Everett
brothers, proponents of Philhellenism in the United States.30
In Britain, the poet Percy Shelley became a major exponent of these sentiments. We are
all Greeks, he wrote. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece.
He believed the modern Greeks were capable of living up to their ancestors. The modern Greek
is the descendant of those glorious beings, Shelley continued, and he inherits much of their
sensibility, their rapidity of conception, and their courage.31 In his poem Hellas, Shelley
heralded Greeces shedding of the Ottoman yoke. The world's great age begins anew,
Shelleys verse begins, the golden years return,
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
...
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if naught so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.32
Hellas was written in 1821, on the eve of the War of Independence. Ozymandias, a work much
more skeptical of ancient civilizations continued potency, had appeared only three years earlier.
Shelley was affected by the upbeat mood emanating from Germany, but another force was
turning British opinion in favour of the modern Greeks: Byron.
The Byronic Turn

30
Heyer, Das philhellenische Argument in Rezeption der Antike, 86.

Howarth, Greek Adventure, 72-3.
32
Percy Shelley, Hellas, http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/hellas.html (accessed 11 February 2007).
31
xxi
While Shelley and scholars across Germany looked back to ancient Greece, Lord
Byron was awakening enthusiasm for its descendants. When he arrived in Athens for the first
time, it was clear then he did not share other travellers interests. Do I look like one of those
emasculated fogies? he asked, when invited to look at ruins.33 Instead, he preferred to swim in
the Aegean and pen verses dismissing his antiquity-obsessed companions as Phidian freaks,
preoccupied with mis-shapen monuments and maimd antiques.34 Still, he wrote, I am not
come here in search of adventures...but to assist in the regeneration of a nation.35 To be a
Philhellene was, for Byron, not toadmire battered statues, or to study amended texts: it was to
suffer and to act. It was to know the people as they lived...to share their lives, to sleep in caves
to travel for days in wet clothes and tattered boots...to roast a spitted lamb, and so on.36
In the short term, Byron stoked enthusiasm for the Greeks among his British peers. T. S.
Hughes sounded a respectful tone while travelling through the country in the wake of Byrons
observations. I would make reasonable allowance for their vices...not inherent in their
disposition, he said.37 Henry Lytton-Bulwer went further. The dress, the manners, the very
ignorance of the people, he wrote, has something in it wild and original.38 Then, of course,
there was Shelley, on whom Byron had a decisive impact.39 The poets influence helped attract
countless British eccentrics and adventurers to Greece when the War of Independence began.
War to the Death: The High Tide of Philhellenism

33

35
36
Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 163
37
Thomas Smart Hughes, Travels in Greece and Albania, Volume 1 (London, 1830): 164.
38
Edward Lytton-Bulwer, An Autumn in Greece (London, 1826): 62, 82, 92. He was not associated with the more
famous Bulwer-Lytton family.
39
Michael O'Neill, Shelley, Percy Bysshe (17921822), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004).
34
xxii
In 1821, rebellious Greeks proclaimed their countrys independence. The declaration
they issued was calculated to appeal to Philhellenes romantic conceptions of Greeces past and
their optimistic predictions for its future. It began by declaring Greeks descendants of a
generous and enlightened nation, and witnesses of the happiness which the sacred aegis of
Law secures to the civilized nations of Europe...Wishing to advance, it continues, as the equals
of the Christians of Europe in the paths of civilization, we combine into one great war.40 This
statement is not only the first expression of the Greeks desire to join Europe. It demonstrates,
significantly, that the phenomenon of Philhellenism had spread and taken root in Greece itself.
The Greeks drive to cast off the Ottoman yoke was not, primarily, influenced by the
desire to resurrect Periclean Athens.41 The revolt against the Ottoman Empire had less grandiose
stimuli. Armed brigands, the klefts, controlled swathes of the countryside for decades.42 This,
along with the decline of once-legendary janissary corps and the threat of Russian expansion,
weakened Ottoman control. Greek influence, meanwhile, was on the rise: as Ottoman political
power in Europe diminished, the empire turned to its Greek Orthodox citizens to help manage
relations with Russia and Austria and serve as governors of other Orthodox provinces.43 Most
significant of all, perhaps, the Greeks developed an entrepreneurial, widely travelled merchant
class, as Venices monopoly over the eastern Mediterranean waned.
The second generation of this elite group, sent to be educated in Western European
universities, served as a conduit for the new doctrines of the French Revolution, and brought
40
Georgios Varouxakis, The Idea of Europe in Nineteenth Century Greek Political Thought, in Philip Carabott
ed., Greece and Europe in the Modern Period: Aspects of a Troubled Relationship (London: Centre for Hellenic
Studies, Kings College London, 1995): 18.
41
Arnold Toynbee discusses previous Greek discussions of antiquity, but asserts that none were significant until a
just prior to the War of Independence. See The Greeks and Their Heritages (New York: Oxford University Press,
1981): 155, 165.
42
Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Modern Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 15.
43
Clogg, Concise History, 20-21.
xxiii
44
back the Philhellenic maxims being proclaimed at Gttingen and other universities. In their
wake, some Greeks began to look toward their countrys ancient past for inspiration.45 They also
began to play upon Western European feelings of guilt and gratitude toward Greece in order to
gain the support of powerful states. This topic of ingratitude of civilised Europe towards their
country is a favourite one with every Greek, and they dwell upon it even to tediousness with
every stranger who will afford his ear to them, one British traveller complained in 1812.46
The cry of the German and Scottish nationalists for European gratitude toward Greece,
Byrons calls for empathy with the modern Greeks, and this Greek echo of their very words,
drove Europeans to offer support both physical and financial for the Greek cause. German
classics professors formed societies to promote Greek independence and called for volunteer
fighters to enlist with Greek rebel armies.47 Although only 300 Germans actually fought in the
war, they were the tip of an iceberg of 10,000 students and academics who drafted money and
resources at home.48 King Ludwig of Bavaria sent monetary aid to the Greek rebels, and
composed poems in their honor.49 A small group of Americans arrived in Greece, pledging to
assist another revolution.50 Cautious scholars assembled to denounce any and all connection
between the ancient Hellenes and the modern Greeks, to little avail; intellectual luminaries egged
the fight on. The names of Byron and Shelley, Goethe, Schiller and Victor Hugo meant nothing
to the Sultan, writes Woodhouse, but these were his real enemies.51
In his 1870 History of Greece, Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdy condemned the periods
44
C. M. Woodhouse, A Short History of Modern Greece (New York: Frederick A. Paeger, 1968): 126. See also
45
Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 101. One notable kleft leader changed his name to Odysseus.
46
Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 37-8.
47
Howarth, Greek Adventure, 79-80.
48
49
Konstantinou, Geleitwort, Rezeption der Antike, 14.
50
Bernal, Black Athena, 290. For more on these see Paul Constantine Pappas, The United States and the Greek War
of Independence, 1821-1828 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1985).
51
Woodhouse, Short History, 136.
xxiv
zealotry. The work of the German professors, he wrote,
had become dangerous; Philhellenism had become a power all its own.It worked as
only religious movements tended to workHere and there men swarmed for the bloody
orphan of European civilisation. The desire for a grand, world-embracing undertaking
was awoken. Memories of the Crusades spread throughout the world. Philhellenism
became the religion of young and old alike.52
The war was, indeed, often seen as a reprise of earlier struggles against the Islamic East,
personified in the figure of the Ottoman Empire. The Courrier Franais proclaimed that the
barbarians of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane are revived in the 19th century. War to the death has
been declared against European religion and civilization.53 It is a disgrace to all the Powers of
Europe, thundered William Wilberforce, that, long ere now, they have not made a
simultaneous effort and driven back a nation of barbarians, the inveterate enemies of Christianity
and freedom.54 Allusions to Herodotus descriptions of the Persian Wars abounded. Any
skirmish in which a few aimless shots were fired and insults hurled at the enemy became in
European papers a second Marathon or Thermopylae, writes David Howarth, and any chief
whose name was known was a second Leonidas or Epaminondas.55
The British remained comparatively cool toward the outbreak of hostilities on the
Peloponnesian peninsula. The Greeks may be bad, wrote a British official in the region,
dismissively. If they do not fight hard, the Turks will chop them into kabobs.56 Even Byron
was somewhat noncommittal: Of the Greeks, I cant say much good hitherto, and I do not like
52
Winfried Lschburg, Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdys Reisen nach Griechenland und seine Forschungen zur
Geschichte des Landes und seines Freiheitskampfes in Rezeption der Antike, 201. The German reads: Das Treiben
der deutschen Professoren...war in der Tat gefaerlich, der Philhellenismus war eine Macht geworden. Er hat
gewirkt, wie sonst nur religioese Bewegungen zu wirken pflegenHier wie dort schwaermte man fuer die
bluetende Waise der europaeischen Zivilisation Die Sehnsucht nach einem grossen, weltumfassenden
Unternehmen war geweckt. Kreuzzugsgedanken gingen durch die Welt. Der Philhellenismus ward die Religion der
Jugend und des Alters.
53
Courrier Franais, 7 June 1821, quoted in Bernal, Black Athena, 291.
54
R. Coupland, Wilberforce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923): 445-6.
55
Howarth, Greek Adventure, 74. See also Ian Macgregor Morris, 'To Make a New Thermopylae': Hellenism,
Greek Liberation, and the Battle of Thermopylae, Greece & Rome 47, no. 2 (October 2000): 211-230.
56
xxv
57
to speak ill of them, he is reported to have said at the time. Indeed, much of his actual
support came in the form of loans and assurances, rather than assistance in combat.
Nevertheless, George Canning, a Byron enthusiast who became Foreign Secretary in
1823, was convinced that Britain should support the Greek rebellion. A constellation of factors
the appointment of Cannings brother as ambassador to the Porte, the dampening effect of the
rebellion on British commercial interests in the region and, most importantly, the purported
atrocities being committed by Egypto-Ottoman admiral Ibrahim Pasha, allowed Canning to push
through formal recognition for the Greek insurrectionists.58 When the liberal Philhellene Charles
X ascended the French throne, when British and French naval commanders offered, at their own
discretion, direct support to the Greek rebels, and when officials in London and Paris began to
fear that an independent Greece might emerge under Russian protection rather than their own,
the decision to intervene more directly was set. At the Battle of Navarino in 1827, a joint British,
French, and Russian naval force obliterated Ibrahim Pashas fleet. Although the war lumbered on
for another two years, this decisive blow all but assured Greeces independence.
Profiteers and Political Scientists: The London Greek Committee

As the war waned in the Aegean, the battle over Greeces future began in the capitals of
Western Europe, where Greek Committees had been set up to provide support for the rebellion.59
The London Greek Committee in particular became a site of speculation over alternate futures
for independent Greece. Its members included the utilitarian political economist Jeremy
57
George Finlay, with 1877 ed. by Reverend H. F. Tozer, A History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to
the Present Time: B. C. 146 To A. D. 1864. Volume VI: The Greek Revolution, Part I: A. D. 1821 - 1827 (New
York: AMS Press, 1970): 326. Angelomatis-Tsougarakis asserts, in fact, that Byron was anti-Greek (Eve of the
Greek Revival 92), but this idea comes almost entirely from accounts given by Leicester Stanhope, who was not the
most friendly individual toward Byron (see below).
58
59
xxvi
Bentham, future Prime Minister Lord John Russell, antislavery activist William Wilberforce,
and the Ricardo brothers. Though as liberal progressives they all professed a common bond, each
tied his support for the Greek cause to one of a myriad other crusades utilitarian government,
expansion of the electorate or profit.60 Elements of their thought, too, influenced Finlays later
observations.
Benthams influence loomed large over the committee.61 The theorist had been searching
for a country in which to test his Principles of Morals and Legislation, a utopian political
manifesto, and he came to believe that newly independent Greece would be the perfect tabula
rasa on which to project his scheme. Leicester Stanhope, dispatched to Greece as the
committees representative, declared that his object was to enable the Greek people to read and
contemplate Benthams works in order to persuade Greek leaders to adopt a constitution similar
to that of France or the United States.62 Byron was amused by the utilitarians attempts to
radically reshape Greece. Stanhope, he wrote, has a plan for organising the military forcesfor
regulating the administration of justice, for making Mr. Bentham the apostle of the Greeks, and
for whipping little boys in the most approved manner.63
Finlays critiques of later attempts to impose abstract political principles on Greece
would be similar in concept. He proved more sympathetic to the committees profiteers, who
were ultimately among its most successful members. Accusations flew that they had used the
committee as a front to finance the war with heavy-interest loans raised on the London Stock
Exchange.64 Many committee members, however, legitimately believed that Greece was a wise
60

See F. Rosen, Bentham, Byron, and Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism, and Early Liberal Political Thought
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), an extensive meditation on Bentham, Benthamites, and the committee.
62
Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 105-6. After the first president of independent Greece, Ioannis Capodistrias, told him
that he wished not to attempt to Anglicanise Greece, Stanhope replied that we rather wished to Americanise her.
63
64
Howarth, Greek Adventure, 121.
61
xxvii
investment; many had seen the benefits of loan-financed development in India and the
Caribbean.65 Member Edward Blaquiere reported back to the committee that in Greece the
prospect for wealth and prosperity is almost boundless.... I should have no hesitation whatever in
estimating the physical strength of regenerated Greece to be fully equal to that of the whole
South American continent.66 It should come as no surprise that Blaquiere had not done a very
thorough survey of the Greek economy; later, it was Greeces very degeneracy that compelled
Finlay to argue fervently for investment from British capitalists.67
An Unrealized Renaissance
While Stanhope departed Greece proud to have left behind the establishment of postal
services, newspapers, and utilitarian societies, most of the Philhellenes who had committed their
lives to the resurrection of ancient Greece were not to leave so satisfied. Many committed
suicide, having contracted a form of malaria that instigated an unbearable bout of depression.68
Byron succumbed after a torturous period of treatment with drugs such as Imperial mustard.
Others departed with their health intact but their idealism not. A group of Philhellenes returned
to Marseille proclaiming that the ancient Greeks no longer exist. Blind ignorance has succeeded
Solon, Socrates, and Demosthenes. Barbarism has replaced the wise laws of Athens.69
The brutal conduct of the war atrocities were committed by the Ottomans and Greek
rebels alike may have contributed to this disillusionment. The post-war political situation also
played a role. The three powers that had helped Greece secure her independence Britain,
France, and Russia were hardly willing to let the newborn state set a precedent for nationalist
65
Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 78-79.

67
Finlays pleas for British investment will be examined more closely in the Epilogue.
68
69
Howarth, Greek Adventure, 81.
66
xxviii
agitation in Ireland or Poland; they circumscribed Greeces boundaries and awarded its
throne to Otto von Wittelsbach, King Ludwig of Bavarias son. Canning dead, Britain was
particularly unenthusiastic about the prospect of an independent Greece. British statesmen feared
a Greece that would diminish the Ottoman Empires ability to keep Russia from entering the
Mediterranean, which threatened Britains sacred line of communication with India.70
Greeces sole similarity with its ancient predecessors appeared to be that it, too, was beset
with continual, internecine conflict.71 Doubts about the inevitability of Greeces rebirth soon
penetrated even the academy. The Russian writer Alexander Pushkin fired the first salvo,
mocking Western European intellectuals for their naivet. That all the enlightened people of
Europe drivel about Greece is inexcusable childishness, he wrote. They had drummed
Themistocles and Pericles into us, and we think that the same people, who consist of robbers and
shopkeepers, are the rightful descendants and heirs of their schoolhouse glory.72 The criticism
struck home; in 1828 Friedrich Thiersch delivered a lecture at the University of Berlin on the
occupying every German Philhellenes mind: How Far Away is the Reappearance of the
Greatness of Greek Science and Education on the Stage of Europe?73 Humboldt was less
optimistic. He no longer saw any evidence that the Greeks were working in the traditions of their
forefathers; the destruction of their ancient constitution, their old communities, and centuries of
intermixture with foreign races had intervened.74
70
Boyd Hilton provides a good narrative of Britains shifting interests in this period. See A Mad, Bad, & Dangerous
People? England 1783-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): 291-3. For a detailed account of the Great
Powers deliberations over newly independent Greece, see C. W. Crawley, The Question of Greek Independence: A
Study of British Policy in the Near East, 1821-1833 (New York: Howard Fertig, 1973).
71
Lschburg, Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdys Reisen, Rezeption der Antike, 196-7.
72
Heyer, Das philhellenische Argument, Rezeption der Antike, 87-8. The Jesuits were almost certainly
Westerners in general.
73
Heyer, Das philhellenische Argument, Rezeption der Antike, 89.
74
Heyer, Das philhellenische Argument, Rezeption der Antike, 90. Marchand, in Down from Olympus, p. 34, notes
that German university curricula quietly returned to their concern for ancient Greece alone.
xxix
Bartholdy praised Lord Byron as one of the few that had not submitted to the belief
in Greeces instant Renaissance. As he long knew the true condition of Greece, the historian
wrote, he never built castles in the air, like the enthusiasts who rushed straight from their school
desks to the homeland ofLeonidas, only to return disappointed, when they failed to catch sight
of the shadows of any great men. By contrast, the starry-eyed Philhellenes who had followed in
Byrons footsteps were condemned to disenchantment. As soon as one stoppedseeing through
the rose-tinted eyeglasses of classical enthusiasm, Bartholdy continued, all that was Greek
diminished pitifully Party struggle threatened to suffocate the initial enthusiasm.75
When he arrived in Greece for the first time with his band of scholar-soldiers from
Gttingen, Finlay was thrilled to meet no less an iconic figure as Byron. The poet, however,
looking down at the strapping Philhellene, told him that he was young and enthusiastic and
therefore sure to be disappointed when you know the Greeks as well as I do.75 Indeed,
disappointment colored Finlays experiences in Greece for the next forty years but surrender
and resignation, in the mode of the philhellenes fleeing back to Marseille - would not.
Chapter II. Formulation: George Finlays Ideas for Greece, 1830-50
THE YOUNG George Finlay was too busy seeking adventure to be disappointed with the
condition of newly independent Greece. Fusing a decidedly Byronic zest for action with a less
Byronlike love affair with the scholarly study of the past, he enjoyed both duelling and exploring
75
Lschburg, Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdys Reisen, Rezeption der Antike 196-7. The German reads: Da er die
Zustaende Griechenlands von frueher kannte, hatte er sich niemals Luftschloesser gebaut, wie die Enthusiasten, die
von den Schulbaenken nach der Heimat des Perikles und Leonidas eilten, um enttaeuscht zurueckzukommen, wenn
sie auch nicht den Schatten jener grossen Maenner erblockt hatten. Denn freilich: sobald man sich nicht mehr
durch die bunte Brille klassischer Schwaemerei it eigenen Augen sah, schrumpften die griechischen Dinge klaeglich
zusammen. Dann schien es, als ob die Tapferkeit, welche einst die Schlachten der europaeischen Zivilisation
gewonnen hatte, nur noch bei Raeubern und Piraten wohneDie anfaengliche Begeisterung drohte in Parteizwist zu
erstikken
75
xxx
ancient ruins. After he and some companions obtained miserable asses and rode to the
presumed site of Troy, however, Finlay was disappointed to be prohibited by Ottoman soldiers
from adding his own peculiar dash of excitement: running naked round the tomb of Achilles.1
Yet he had also been busy searching for a new purpose. In this strange life of mine what
have I been in search of? Finlay wondered.2 His immediate concern in the years since the war
had been to maintain himself in Greece. After learning that his conservative relatives were
unwilling to lend their support, Finlay spent a great deal of time making calculations on...the
great diminution in my small fortune.3 Sustenance now required routine. I have such appalling
need of changing my lazy mode of life, he continued, & unlessI divide my time in some
rational manner...I shall soon be little more than a miserable vegetable.4 He soon married, and
acquired both a commercial farm in Aegina and a townhouse in Athens.
These pragmatic concerns are significant, for they helped shape Finlays writings on
contemporary Greece. On New Years Day, 1833, he recalled some advice Byron had given him
that, while he wrote down what transpired during his time in Greece, his life would never lack
for romance. Finlay resolved to chronicle developments in Greece, but his motivations were now
different. Greek independence, he believed, would put an end todisorders, tyranny &
violence, and reduce the country to the insipid as well as secured state of European society.
Now, transformed as I am from an independent soldier to a wealthy Greek landholder,
and consequently with every incitement to find order agreeable as well as profitable...As I
possess at length a comfortable house & the appliances & means of examining and
recording the process of Greece from Barbarism back to Civilization, and as, if life be
granted to me, I must bear some part in aiding the arduous undertaking, I...who have been
all my life a searcher after the romantic and after ideal perfection...determine to become
1
Entry of 26 June 1829 in J. M. Hussey ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume I: The Journals
(Athens: Porphyrogenitus, 1995): 8.
2
Entry of 19 August 1829 in Journals 23.
3
Entry of 11 September 1832 in Journals 59.
4
xxxi
the steady journalist of the prosaic scenes I am now to witness.
Hence, Finlays concern for profit built on security of property would force him to pay attention
to Greeces course from Barbarism back to Civilization. In newly independent Greece, two
theories vied for control of this process the idealist approach of German intellectuals, and
abstract political economic theories akin to the utilitarians. Finlay found both lacking, and
advocated a different approach to Greeces history. The Greek past, he reasoned, should be used
to help understand and improve upon its present, but it should also be grounded in a much more
holistic and scientific approach than the mere idolization of a distant antiquity.
Demise of the Greek Ideal
By 1830, many feared that newly independent Greece would not only fail to live up to its
purported potential, but might actually sink below the level of stability and material prosperity it
enjoyed under the Ottomans. Samuel Howe, an American doctor who had served with Finlay
during the war, wrote that he was shocked at the poverty and degradation the war had left
behind, the thousands and thousands of homeless people dying of neglect, the children stunted by
want and the maimed beggars crawling in the streets.6 The political situation was not promising;
Greeces new sovereign did not arrive from Bavaria until 1833, and in that time its president,
Ioannis Capodistrias, had already issued autocratic laws in order to control the factionary warfare
erupting among the ex-soldiery. His actions earned the ire of British Philhellenes, including
Finlay, and he was eventually assassinated by an insulted clan leader.7
Capodistrias death, and the ensuing yearlong anarchy, led many Philhellenes to conclude
Entry of 1 January 1833 in Journals 64.

David Howarth, The Greek Adventure: Lord Byron and Other Eccentrics in the War of Independence (New York:
Atheneum, 1976): 243.
7
Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Modern Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 44. See
also C. M. Woodhouse, The Philhellenes (Rutherford, N. J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971): 147.
6
xxxii
they had been wasting their time. They began to quit Greece in droves. Henry LyttonBulwer and David Urquhart even renounced Philhellenism to become Turcophiles.8 The Austrian
historian J. P. Fallermeyer pondered whether the contemporary Greeks were actually Slavs.9 A
select group of highly dedicated Philhellenes remained in Greece, about six of them British. Of
these, however, only Finlay became a notable public figure.
Yet even Finlay came close to quitting the country, at one point remarking that it was
only a lack of funds that kept him from returning to Scotland.10 Political violence was endemic,
he wrote; various armed factions frequently entered the National Assembly to demand their
rights.11 He was unamused by the struggle between ostensibly liberal groups. 5 killed & 3
wounded, he wrote after one engagement, sardonically. They all talk of Constitution &
Justice.12 When political violence subsided, the ex-soldiery turned to armed brigandage for
sustenance. Finlays own farm was robbed several times in 1830 alone,13 and no one was safe
from robbery when departing Athens anytime in 1831.14 Finlays explanation was simple. The
troops are more than the Govt or country can pay, he wrote. To eat they must plunder & to
plunder make a civil war.15 Consequently, Trade is neglected and property, a subject
becoming dear to Finlay, not yet secured. Mutual distrust reigns & seems augmenting so
8
Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 148-52. Urquhart asserted that Greece that had corrupted the Empire, and not the other
way around.
9
William St. Clair, That Greece Might Still be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence (London: Oxford
University Press, 1972): 351. In this Fallermeyer reprised earlier theories developed by travelers to Greece that the
local inhabitants could hardly be counted as descendants of the ancients (see Chapter One). The Austrian historian
specifically contrasted the Germanic Dorians, or ancient Greeks, with the oriental Ionians who occupied the
country in modern times, seemingly a means to dissociate Germans, who had been locating their national past in
Greece, with the failure of the Philhellenic project.
10
Entry of 18 July 1830 in Journals 30.
11
Entry of 25 December 1831 in Journals 47.
12
Entry of 26 Dec 1831 in Journals 47.
13
Entries of 7-8 March 1830 in Journals 26. Finlay seemed oddly unfazed when his possessions were seized for an
ostensibly political cause. Some soldiers came & seized our fowls ducks Turkeys & pigs with no small show of
insolence to me. I dont mind it tho success to the Cons[titutio]n. See entry of 28 December 1831 in Journals 48.
14
Entry of 16 December 1831 in Journals 46.
15
Entry of 28 January 1832 in Journals 48.
xxxiii
rapidly. Athens was in deplorable shape, still in a state of ruins not one quarter of the
city is rebuilt.... The insecurity of property, in consequences of the...thefts & robberies...render it
dangerous as well as unprofitable to venture much capital for its reconstruction.16
The Tyranny of Germany over Greece

Finlay blamed the government, above all, for the poor condition of Greece. The country
only flourished, he asserted, in spite of its rulers. The impulse towards order & wealth is given,
he wrote & it must be the fault of the government & gross the fault must be, if Greece falls into
a state of disorder.17 The models the Bavarian regency used were in conflict with Greeces
natural, prosperous state. The first was a reflection of the Philhellenic idealism which had
inspired him to set out from Gttingen: an unflinching focus on Greeces classical past. The
other was an attempt to implement abstract theories of bureaucratic administration in much the
same mode as the Benthamite utilitarians. Both approaches bespoke an understanding of Greece
from above, with little attempt to study the actual condition of the country.
The Bavarians idealization of ancient Greece was evident from the moment King Otto
set foot in his new kingdom; in celebration, an old Ottoman mosque was retrofitted with a
column from the Treasury of Atreus. When Otto stepped beneath it, the Bavarians believed,
he entered on the heritage of Atreus son Agamemnon.18 The educational system was reformed
to emphasize elements of the classical past; instructors attempted to instil a version of the Greek
language purified of post-classical accretions.19 Meanwhile, ancient names were resurrected
or devised for the coinage, for officers of state, for ranks in the army and navy, for the law. The
16

18
Richard Stoneman, Land of Lost Gods: the Search for Classical Greece (London: Hutchinson, 1987): 242.
19
17
xxxiv
streets of Athens were named after the famous and obscure men of antiquity.
20
The selection of Athens as the new capital was itself significant, for more prosperous and
centrally located cities were passed up for one associated with the glories of the Periclean age.2
1
Accordingly, the Bavarians moved to sweep away remnants of Athens Byzantine and Ottoman
past and reconstruct classical monuments, often with an eye toward an idealized, rather than
accurate, understanding of Greek architecture.22 One aspect of this plan was the archaeological
excavation of a vast portion of the city center, resulting in the prohibition of new construction.
Finlay did not even take this proposal seriously, at first. Govt are amusing themselves with
negotiations with the town of Athens about excavating half the city. A very silly project very
silly conducted, he wrote in August 1833.23 The next month, however, he had become
personally affected. I was ordered to cease building my house in consequence of some ideal &
chimerical plan of excavation, he wrote. Total ignorance of the subject seems their data for
acting.24 A halt on construction in the still war-damaged city, he wrote, would prove seriously
injurious to the prospects of industry in Greece25 The Bavarians attempt to resurrect classical
Athens appeared a selfish and superficial endeavor. Such men, Finlay wrote, will do what [they
think] best suits the view people will take of the matter in Europe, not what suits the interests of
Athens.25
Finlay also bore witness to the Bavarians attempt to implement abstract theories of
20
St. Clair, That Greece Might Still be Free, 351.

22
St. Clair, That Greece Might Still be Free, 351. For example, the Parthenon was retrofitted solely to look more
picturesque when viewed from the city below. See Stoneman, Land of Lost Gods, 242.
23
24
Entry of 23 September 1833 in Journals 73. Finlay claims to have lost 2,000 dollars due to the scheme.
25
Finlay to Leake, 18 October 1833 in J. M. Hussey ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume II:
Finlay-Leake and Other Correspondence (Athens: Porphyrogenitus, 1995): 473. Leake was an antiquarian and
geographer, and was Finlays most prominent penpal, his letters comprising the bulk of Finlays lifetime
correspondence.
25
Entry of 12 September 1834 in Journals 89-90.
21
xxxv
bureaucratic administration. These were imported from various Continental states, but were
similar in spirit to those advocated by the Benthamites of the 1820s. Such notions were also
visible in the governments plans for Athens. Vast new structures, in particular a royal palace,
were planned for the city, requiring exorbitant tax increases and property seizures.26 It was more
economical, Finlay maintained, to retain the old city; it also ensured the capital would not
become on a scale more suitable to Russia than Greece.27 Still, the government plowed ahead
with its plans, appropriating some of Finlays own property in the process. This was carried out
alongside other reforms. The Regents blithely fashioned the institutions of the new state after
western European models. The educational system, for instance, was based on French and
German prototypes. Criminal and civil law codes were introduced which reflected the Roman
legal traditions of continental Europe and took little heed of existing customary law.28
For Finlay, now in Greece for years, a government organized on such alien principles was
destined to fail. The Bavarians, he asserted, could not govern a country they had never bothered
to study or understand; they were either pursuing a fairy tale version of ancient Greek history or
applying their native forms of government. Germans, he wrote, labour to think all facts
imaginary, & turn all imaginations into facts.29 As such, tho the Germans can write about
Govt & administration they can neither govern well nor act wisely.30 The Minister of War, for
one, distrusted every Greek & Philhellene & thought to do without them.31 Another official
was conceited & as presumptuous in the affairs of Greece as ignorant.32 Such aloofness carried
26
Stoneman, Land of Lost Gods, 238.

Entry of 26 June 1834 in Journals 84. This is a reference to the autocratic character of Russia and the architectural
legacy of its tsars.
28
29
Entry of 21 February 1832 in Journals 49.
30
Entry of 18 October 1834 in Journals 92.
31
Entry of 3 June 1835 in Journals 95.
32
Entry of 18 June 1837 in Journals 118.
27
xxxvi
serious consequences. In the north, a whole town had been alarmed & the garrison put
under arms from fear of an attack from... robbers. In reality, the trouble was caused by some
German pioneers seized with the desire of eating roast jackdaws & commencing the
unsportsmanlike amusement of shooting them at roost.33
Given the detachment of the Bavarian regents from actual conditions in Greece, it was
perhaps inevitable that they would cultivate fantasies of their own power in the country. Finlay
illustrated this pretense with an anecdote in which King Otto is supposed to have replied to news
of a rebellion: I would ride up to the gates & it would be given up as my popularity is so
great.34 Another example involved poor policing of the frontier regions. Not one German in the
Kingdom knows anything about [them], Finlay wrote. In all this part of Greece the people are
alarmed. They took the Bavarian patrolmen for robbers & fled until [their] frank uniforms
were seen.35 If their inability to appraise the true nature of the country were not enough, Finlay
notes, the Bavarians Western methods and attitudes brought with them a sense of superiority.
He described one as a prejudiced European who thinks because he wore long trowsers from his
youth that he must know how to govern Greece better than people who wore fustinellos.36
Failures and Opportunities
According to Finlay, the practical consequence of the Bavarians two misguided priorities
their obsession with the relics of Greeces classical past and their insistence on imposing
Continental bureaucracy was well-meaning yet poorly executed reform. Decrees have been
made on paper to be read as perfect in Bavaria but hardly one has been carried into effect in
Greece, he wrote.37 Heavy taxes dampened the economy, and were used to make up revenue
33

35
Entry of 23 July 1835 in Journals 490. Frank was the Greek term for Western Europeans.
36
Finlay to Leake, 23 July 1835, in Letters 491.
37
34
xxxvii
shortfalls rather than invested in infrastructure. This led to absurd consequences; on the
island of Siphnos, there was no local school system because of the amount seized by the central
government.38 The greatest complaint of the inhabitants of this island is the amount of the
taxes, Finlay wrote. I have not met one person who has spoken in favor of the Govt since
King Othos arrival nor found a single person who respects it.39 Poorly executed collection,
moreover, eroded property rights. One year, Finlay records, collectors took too long to collect
part of his crop. The crop [was] in danger of being ruined by rain & stolen, he reported. I
asked permission to collect it. It was refused & I was told that I should be guilty of theft if I took
it in...I left it. Peasants stole it. I apply to the public prosecutor to prosecute them for the theft &
nothing is done.40
The security of property, already infringed in Athens by the government itself, was
elsewhere threatened by looters. One of the chief reasons for this was the failure to establish a
uniform network of courts or police facilities throughout the new state, despite the well-heralded
design of such a system on the German model.41 The only signs of a police existing at
Athens...is, obliging all the dogs to wear collars Finlay joked. In one province in the north,
the state of the civil Government...is deplorable. The [informal] justice of the peace
courts do little else than harm. No police courts exist. There are only three notaries & all
three are in prison for offenses relating to their profession. The tribunals by sustaining all
actions for past offences cause a spirit of alarm & discontent amongst the old
soldiery...Other proprietors....seeing this are alarmed & refuse to serve in the municipal
office thus internally & externally the society seemed threatened.
The limited military was not Greek and contained too few Bavarians to effectively guard the
38
Entry of 24 July 1837 in Journals 218. Another example: Austrian wood pays 6 per cent duty, Finlay reported,
while Greek pays 24 so commerce is encouraged & Greek wood is burnt as a nuisance in Attica 2000 acres of
wood have this year been burnt (Finlay to Leake, 30 September 1839 in Letters 576).
39
40
Finlay to Leake, 30 September 1839 in Letters 577.
41
C. M. Woodhouse, A Short History of Modern Greece (New York: Frederick A. Paeger, 1968): 159, praises this
legal code but hardly discusses its implementation.
xxxviii
frontiers, such that the captains of armatoli in Turkey allowed their soldiers to come in
& plunder in Greece, further eroding the security of property.42
Beyond such impediments, however, Finlay believed that substantial opportunities for
economic development in Greece were being missed by applying abstract theories. The
governments nationalization of pastureland, for example, meant it was less likely to be
improved than private property; individual initiative could be quickly curtailed by the
government.43 By instead dividing this property, the government could collect revenue as well as
encourage cultivation.44 In these early writings there is also the sense that Finlay valued local
initiative and devolution of responsibilities. Monks, he observed, were greater capitalists than
the villagers they can spare some of their resources for these public works without which I
should fear this country would soon be uninhabitable.45
The Constitutional Constant of Greek History

Despite their efforts at reform, the government continued to face resistance from armed
factions throughout the 1830s, and attempts to clamp down by censoring the press were met with
characteristic dismay by the remaining liberal Philhellenes. Finlay saw these laws as means to
keep Greeks from being informed of, and participating in, the affairs of state. The fact is the
[governments] policy...is to persuade the Greeks that the art of government is a wonderful
mystery, Finlay asserted, & a determination to prevent the extention [sic] of education from
fear of the inhabitants of the country taking the administration into their own hands, is the state
42

Entry of 23 Jan 1834 in Journals 78. Proprietors complain that they cannot venture to lay out all the capital
necessary to put their property in a productive state from the fear of measures of the Govt following which might
render their undertakings unsafe, Finlay wrote.
44
Entry of 9 November 1835 in Journals 102: The first step is the division of the national lands amongst the people
of the province.
45
43
xxxix
46
secret of the Greek placemen & politicians. The government was not only out of touch
with Greece, Finlay argued, but was actively closing out Greeks who could offer useful
perspectives.
The character of the Greek monarchy appeared increasingly despotic, inviting
comparisons with the Ottoman Empire, the oriental despotism from which many Western
Europeans believed the new state had been liberated. I could never have imagined that Greece,
at the end of 15 years liberation from the oriental yoke, wrote Martin Leake, would have been
in its present condition not much improved in wealth and civilization and a plaything within
hands of a selfish young tyrant.47 Though he does not state it directly, Leake alludes to the
question of whether Greece had really ever made any progress along its journey to the West. A
new generation of European travelers went further, seeing Greeces state as worse than
Turkeys.48 Poets and writers also picked up on this trope; some came to draft all of Greek
history into that of the Orient. Alexander the Great, for example, became Iskander, a name
which, Jenkyns writes, suggests an oriental warlord.49
Finlay, too, increasingly viewed Greece as an oriental realm, an idea apparent in his
frequent contrasts between the country and Europe or the West. From 1824, when he penned
memoranda suggesting that Greece could not be judged by European standards,50 to the 1860s,
when he remarked upon the Greeks oriental beliefs in personal influences,51 this idea
46
Entry of 17 November 1835 in Journals 102.

Leake to Finlay, 29 January 1843 in Letters 612.
48
Woodhouse, Short History, 161.
49
Richard Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980): 50-51. In fact,
Iskender is simply the Turkish rendering of the name Alexander.
50
William Miller, The Finlay Papers, The English Historical Review 39, no. 155. (July 1924): 387.
51
J. M. Hussey, Introduction in Journals xxx. See also Finlays characterization of the Nomarch of Athens as
lazy and as incapable of energy as his [Turkish] predecessors (Entry of 21 Nov 1833 in Journals 75) and his
characterization tax system: The effects of this system of taxation on the condition of Greek agriculture may still
be studied in the dominions of Sultan Abdul-medjid, or of King Otho, for they rival one another in the disastrous
effects of their fiscal administration. See George Finlay, with 1877 ed. by Reverend H. F. Tozer, A History of
Greece from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time: B. C. 146 To A. D. 1864. Volume VI: The Greek
47
xl
permeated his writings. When Finlay actually began to acquire experiences in the Orient,
however, he began to realize that the stereotypes applied to the region would not suffice. If
oriental Greece could be reformed into a European state, so too could Egypt and Turkey,
which exhibited, for Finlay, surprisingly advanced features.52 In the meantime, however, Finlay
focused his attention on how Greeces Westernization faltering under the Bavarians could be
practically achieved.
One idea Finlay acquired in Egypt was that an alien governmenthas always to
encounter great difficulties, and unless it be based on some organised rules & exercise its power
by some permanent bodies not susceptible of transient caprice, the probabilities are against its
duration.53 Without a stable foundation, Finlay believed, making Greece more like Western
Europe was impossible. Greece had to rest, first, upon organized rules and permanent
bodies, not merely those of Greeces distant classical age, but those which had been
intransient over a much longer period. If, as he discovered, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire
were capable of moving West, they were not inherently oriental. Nor were, Finlay believed,
the Byzantine and Ottoman periods of Greek history. He could extract bases of West which
had persisted from the classical age. He concluded that the features of Greek government that
remained throughout those periods would guarantee Greeces stability as it Westernized.
The initial recommendation Finlay made for the improvement of Greece was the
establishment of a National Assembly.54 He argued that an organization representing Greeks
local and particular problems had been a feature of Greeces history over the longue dure.
The absence of representation led to friction between the government and people. As Greece
Revolution, Part I: A. D. 1821 1827 (New York: AMS Press, 1970): 13.
52
A more complete account of these travels is presented in Chapter Four.
53
Undated entry of 1845 in Journals 265, here referring to Mohammed Alis government, for the Egyptian ruler was
a Turkish-speaking Albanian.
54
Dealt with, primarily, in Chapter Three.
xli
has a communal social organization independent of her general government; that communal
feeling is called into operation against the general & is actually employed to reject every law &
ordinance of government, Finlay believed. This I feel has gone so far that it can only be cured
by a national assembly or force.55 Because it is undeniable that [those] who rule Greece know
nothing about the country & cannot speak a word of the language, he asserted,
legislation is running counter to the progress of the nation, the question is how to bring
them in unison. It appears to me that this can only be done well & permanently in all
countries by the means of representative legislative assembly...[the] Govt would see on
what they can safely legislate & on what it is useless to meddle with.56
Hence the central government would finally be apprised of local conditions, which compelled
Greeks to act against out-of-touch laws. Greece would not after 8 years of peacebe now
without the foundations of material prosperity, he wrote, including roads & steam boats, if she
had possessed a representative body to speak of their need.57 An assembly would serve as a
safety valve for the expression of discontent, draining momentum from armed bands.
Representative government was, Finlay claimed, indigenous to Greece. Martin Leake
demonstrated this belief in a letter parroting back much of Finlays rhetoric. The Greeks
tendency to republican forms of government, he wrote, is indigenous in the construction of
their country.58 Thus the reasoning behind Finlays comment that as all greek political men are
venal a constitution a Greek and not an European one is necessary. The goal might be
Westernization, but the foundation this required needed to be rooted in Greeces expressly
non-Western reality, one the Bavarians had never bothered to investigate. The need, Finlay
55
Finlay to Goss, Undated 1841 in Letters 787. While the practice of determining such essential governing
characteristics may seem antiquated today, Woodhouses Short History, from 1968, is filled with far more vapid,
essentialist characterizations. There was an instinctive attachment in Greece to the principle of monarchy, he
writes at one point (157); at another an apology for the Bavarian regency reading briefly: the Greeks were hard to
govern (158).
56
Entry of 1 March 1836 in Journals 106.
57
Finlay to Leake, 5 April 1841 in Letters 590.
58
Leake to Finlay, 11 April 1833 in Letters 471.
xlii
wrote, was to discover the specific, organic law of the Greek state, which is older than the
Greek kingdom.59 This was, he asserted, a conservative project. Germany France England &
Russia send us nothing but project making diplomats, he complained, and no man will study
what exists & build & repair on the existing institutions. Radical as I am in Western politics the
recklessness of ignorance here has made me a sworn conservative in Greece.60
To justify Greeces capacity for such an assembly, Finlay indulged the idea of writing a
history of modern Greece, in which, given the misunderstandings of the Bavarians, his great
object would be to bring out the peculiar moral & political features which separate Greek history
from that of our European nations & represent the different feelings of Greeks from Franks in a
political light.61 Yet Finlays History, completed by the mid-1850s, went beyond the mere
separation of Frank and Greek political categories. It presented, for the first time, the history
of Greece as an unbroken unity, from the Roman era to Finlays time, and sought to draw out the
common foundation for its material well-being in the Byzantine and Ottoman as well as classical
periods. While the Bavarians looked for models in modern Germany and ancient history books
Finlay sought them not only in ancient Athens, but in its Greek descendants as well. Thus, one
major aspect of Finlays History is his identification of historical precursors for representative
assemblies, in which he found the true bedrock of the Greek constitution. It was only in the
immediate post-independence era, he asserts, that this indigenous constitution came to an end.
Military violence, he wrote of this period,
prolonged the revolutionary state of the country for eleven years, by placing
constitutional liberty in abeyance. It threw the people into an unquiet and dangerous
temper, by sweeping away those free institutions which had infused energy into the
nation during its struggle for independence.62
59

Finlay to Leake, 26 September 1836 in Letters 518.
61
Finlay to Leake, 26 September 1836 in Letters 518-9.
62
60
xliii
This line of thought developed, however, long before Finlay actually penned his History. By the
time this work was complete, Finlay had been forced to develop a far more sophisticated idea
about the nature of the Greek constitution, elucidated in Chapter Three.
In the interim, from the mid 1830s to the early 1840s, Finlay was preoccupied with the
question of how a constitution would be practically achieved. This led to his first foray into
politics. After appealing unsuccessfully to Otto and his Bavarian ministers, Finlay met anxiously
with British ambassadors, who were among the most avid advocates of constitutionalism in
Greece, and scribbled letters home for circulation among politicians in London. However,
Finlays attempts to alert the British government to the state of the country were met with little
interest. As early as 1831, he was disappointed to learn that Greece is totally forgotten [while] I
have spent too much in and on Greece to think of anything else.64 One significant factor was
that a more democratic Greece was seen as a potential ally of Orthodox Russia.63 As they began
to enter the upper echelons of Britains government, however, old Philhellenes agreed to look
into Finlays allegations of the abuse of property rights by the Greek government.65 The British
legation at Athens was subsequently zealous in its pursuit of constitutionalist aims; in 1837
Ambassador Sir Edmund Lyons declared England would resist all attacks on the liberty of the
press & would support a constitution at all risks. Finlay was exultant.66 Within months,
however, Lyons position at Ottos court had diminished considerably; Russia had gotten wind of
Britains undue influence. Finlay lamented that the year 1837 terminates & we have not gained
the Present Time: B. C. 146 To A. D. 1864. Volume VII: The Greek Revolution, Part II: Establishment of the Greek
Kingdom (New York: AMS Press, 1970): 95-6.
64
Entry of 23 May 1831 in Journals, 37.
63
65
Entry of 5 September 1831 in Journals, 38.
66
Entry of 20 March 1837 in Journals, 116-7.
xliv
67
during it a single step towards good government. In 1840 he worried that England seems
to have too many things to occupy her to bestow a thought on Greece,68 and, in 1841, whether
Britain had reneged on its constitutionalist pledges altogether.69
In 1842, Finlay took to the British public. By this time, however, his theories about the
Greek constitution were more fully developed, and he was preparing to draw them out in his
History. Moreover, constitutionalist factions in Greece were reasserting themselves, and
premonitions of revolution abounded. It is known the King dislikes the Greeks, Finlay wrote,
presciently, they will soon repay it, by insult for they have commenced recriminations which
bear a threatening aspect.70 Within four years, the threat of armed agitation against Ottos
autocracy became real.
Chapter III. Revolution: The Shaping of the Greek Constitution, 1843-1864
ON NOVEMBER 3rd, 1843, a coup dtat was launched against the royal palace in
Athens, and King Otto was forced to accept a constitution. Little of the discord leading up to the
coup, however, had to do with George Finlays characteristic complaints. Greek discontent with
Ottos estrangement from the Orthodox Church played a larger role.1 Still, a representative
assembly was established, and many, including Finlay, were enthusiastic about its future. In
Blackwoods Magazine he wrote that the new constitution must be regarded as a very
favourable specimen of the [Greeks] political knowledge. The manner in which it was
67
Entry of 22 November 1837 in Journals, 120.

Entry of 27 May 1840 in Journals, 124.
69
Entry of 19 March 1841 in Journals, 588.
70
Finlay to Leake, 30 September 1839, in Letters, 574.
1
Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 51. As far as many
revolutionary Greeks were concerned, the revival and expansion of Orthodoxy were more significant than Finlays
political plans. These deemed the War of Independence an unfinished spiritual revolution. See Apostolos
Makrakis, Hellenism and the Unfinished Revolution: Twenty Addresses Delivered in Concord Square, Athens,
Greece, in 1866 (Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1968).
68
xlv
adopted gave all those who witnessed the debates a very high opinion of the legislative
capacity of the people.2 Finlay convinced that the essential character of Greek political
knowledge had been released after centuries of slumber, and stability would reign once more.
Finlays assessment would soon change entirely. He found that deficiencies in the 1844
constitution resulted in widespread corruption and the continuing ignorance of local conditions.
He concluded that the mere establishment of a representative assembly would not suffice to bring
about Greeces renaissance. From the period just following the adoption of the first constitution
to the next outbreak of revolution, in 1862, his crusade against absolutism was transformed into
one for a system of appropriate checks and balances, especially for participatory municipal
institutions. These, he believed, would be more responsive to local needs and would be a basis
for a more experienced, less corruptible national government and, therefore, for
Westernization. His History, when complete, would assert the importance of such institutions
throughout Greek history, even moreso than representative assemblies.
In this, Finlays thinking reflected the liberal ideal of mid-nineteenth century British
government, in which robust local and extra-parliamentary institutions promoted an orderly
liberty. To liberals, local self-government was the heart of Britains organic constitution, and
they derived, ultimately, from the same ancient institutions Finlay was attempting to restore in
Greece. The stable basis Finlay sought for Westernization via such institutions was, then,
Western itself; a product of European classical Greece and modern, Western Britain alike.
Finlay would use this logic to attempt to inculcate in Britons a sense of unique responsibility for
the renaissance of true Greek democracy. This may account for Britains decisive non2
Unsigned, The Actual Condition of the Greek State, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine 55 no. 344 (June 1844):
792. Though the Blackwoods articles I use to illustrate Finlays opinions are not specifically attributed, they are
generally considered Finlays work, and Finlay himself admits to writing them. See William Miller, The Finlay
Papers, The English Historical Review 39, no. 155 (July 1924): 398.
xlvi
interference in the name of Finlays own principles by the time another revolution rocked
Greece, twenty years after the first.
Of Balance and Bribery: Problems with the Constitution of 1844

However well-framed the constitution of 1844, it did not engender a praiseworthy
government. Only a few years after his praise of the revolution, Finlay declared that Greece is a
most unfortunate country. She has only escaped the Turks to be plundered by her rulers and
ruined by her protectors.3 A few years later he seemed to concede that the Renaissance project
had come to a dead end. Greece remained entrenched in a medieval age. Describing frequent
attacks on tourists visiting archaeological sites,4 he wrote that Greece cannot go on much longer
without perpetuating the anarchy that reigned in Europe during the middle ages.5
Responsibility for the misgovernment of the country after 1844, he concluded, lay as
much with the constitution as the king. King Otho took an oath to govern according to the
provisions of a very democratic constitution, wrote Finlay, andwhether he has kept his oath
inviolate or not, he has not committed such gross perjury as the senators and deputies. While
he strained the constitution to extend his authority...they violated the constitution to increase
their salaries.6 Their poverty and ignorance left them unprepared to resist the lucre of the kings
treasury. While the Constitution included theoretical checks and balances, the struggling
economy and a lack of political education compelled officials to swallow bribes rather than fulfil
their constitutional duties. Those who were supposed to better represent the desperate condition
of the country were compromised, ironically, by that very condition themselves.
3
Unsigned, Greece Again, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine 67, no. 415 (May 1850): 526.
Finlay to Leake, 19 June 1848, in J.M. Hussey, ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume II: FinlayLeake and Other Correspondence (Athens: Porphyrogenitus, 1995): 634-641.
5
Finlay to Leake, 27 February 1849, in Letters, 642.
6
Unsigned, The Fall of King Otho in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine 94, no. 577 (November 1863): 588.
4
xlvii
The Greek Senate, for example, was supposed to include members whose interests
naturally tended to check those of the deputies in the more populist lower house, as well as those
of the executive. The problem, according to Finlay, was that not one single element of an
aristocracy, which would incline toward such interests, existed. Given the state of the country, it
was impossible to secure superior education in the members of [the] chamberNo nobles, no
independent gentlemen, no dignified clergy, no learned lawyers, can enter the Greek Senate.
Consequently, the chamber was primarily composed of impoverished illiterates.7 The ignorance,
& absence of ideas in all classes...is perfectly wonderful & there has never yet been a
[government] since the constitution was established of which every member could read & write,
Finlay wrote to John Stuart Mill. Greeces constitution, he sneered, is merely pour rire, or
rather serves only to enable the whole upper & middle class to sell themselves to the
government.8 To Leake, he wrote that the restrictions imposed by the constitution has made
[the Senate] an assembly of old women incapable [of] being a legislative body.9
The problem with the representative chamber was similar; it was composed almost
entirely of ignorant men, since Greek provinces could not even turn out a supply of country
attorneys [given] the state of civilization.10 Furthermore, the members [of the lower house] are
elected by universal suffrage and ballot...but practically by intimidation and fraud, particularly
the stuffing of ballot-boxes. Universal suffrage and the secret ballot could be desirable in
Greeces future, but at present, he believed, they were facilitating corruption.11 As early as 1847,
Finlay despaired to Leake, you hear probably already of the failure of the constitution.12
7
Blackwoods, May 1850, 536-7.

J.M. Robson, ed., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Volume XIV: The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill,
1849-1873 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972): 431.
9
Finlay to Leake, 20 October 1844, in Letters, 625-6.
10
Finlay to Leake, 20 October 1847, in Letters, 628.
11
Blackwoods, November 1863, 588.
12
Finlay to Leake, 20 October 1847, in Letters, 628.
8
xlviii
The result of all this corruption, at every level of government, was the lack of
impartial justice. For Finlay, this was exemplified by the monarchys retention, even after the
adoption of the constitution, of the plot it had seized from him for the construction of the royal
palace. Finlay elevated this to a general problem. Even the late national assembly has not
thought it necessary to correct any of the invasion of private property by the preceding
despotism, he wrote. Individuals, almost ruined by the plunder of their land, have not even
received the offer of an indemnity, though the justice of their claims is not denied.13 Finlay had
felt so vexed by this problem that he appealed to the House of Lords to send an arbitrator to
argue in his favor.14
The insouciance with which the Greeks met this situation also irked Finlay. In fact, it
seemed to signal their lack of preparation for civic duty of any sort. Ten years have now elapsed
since the constitutional system was established, so that for ten years the Greeks have made their
own laws and voted their own budgets, he wrote in 1854. At the same time, the enjoyment of
the fullest liberty of the press...have enabled every party and class to criticise the acts of the
government with unrestrained licence. Therefore, he concluded, if corruption and venality
have been the leading features of political society in Greece during this period, it is evident that
the nation has been a party to the abuses, from its refusal to punish the offenders.15 A means
beyond the constitution to reform such civic cowardice was required, Finlay believed. For the
constitution to be effective as a system of checks and balances, Greeks would require far greater
moral and intellectual preparation. In order to secure free institutions to any people, it is more
necessary to create a feeling of moral responsibility, than to protect the electors from the effects
13
Blackwoods, October 1854, 793.

See Parliamentary Papers no. 1179, Vol. LVI, Correspondence Respecting Mr. Finlays Claim Upon the Greek
Government: Additional to the Papers Presented to Parliament on the 22nd of February (London: Harrison and Son,
1850): 407.
15
14
xlix
of intimidation and fraud merely when they exercise the franchise, Finlay wrote, for
national liberty cannot be protected by a wooden box; it must be fought for boldly before
the face of all mankind. The vote by ballot injures the nation more than it protects the
individual; and it can only cease to do harm in a state of society where perfect equality
reigns among the electors themselves, and between the electors and the elected.16
The equality Finlay wrote of was that which would allow the oversight necessary in order to
balance the interests of the executive and his subjects, and this could be most easily established
by improving the moral and political faculties of the people.
Resurrecting Local Government

Finlay believed that the moral strength the Greeks needed to bring balance to their
government could be attained by extending their responsibilities within local municipalities.
Experience in local government would allow Greeks to improve their national governance in
turn. They still want, he wrote, the experience necessary to give ordinary men a sense of the
value of political honesty, and there is no possibility of their gaining it in any school but that of
their own municipal practice.17 Because, moreover, participation could be extended to many,
local needs would be addressed more quickly and fittingly than through a central government.
Had the people in Greece been allowed to administer their local affairs they would have drawn
much of their attention from party struggles about which they knew very little, to devote it to
business they perfectly understood, Finlay claimed.18 Such local administration did persist, and
was ultimately more responsive than the central state. Every one who had travelled much in
Greece must have seen, Finlay wrote, that every little town and island contained two or three
individuals capable of fulfilling the duties of a local magistracy with honour to their country,
16
Blackwoods, May 1850, 536.

18
17
l
19
adding that the people are greatly in advance of their rulers. The efficiency of this system,
Finlay believed, demonstrated that it was the essential Greek constitution. The Golden Age of
classical Greece had, of course, been one in which the peninsula was divided into countless citystates, and Greeces fragmented geography had more or less preserved vestiges of local
autonomy throughout the Byzantine and Ottoman periods.
The persistence of local, participatory institutions was the second great theme Finlay
expounded upon in his History, which he published during this period. In Blackwoods, he
reiterated his view that Greece
has, and always has been, divided into communities enjoying the right of choosing their
own magistrates. The most populous town, and the smallest hamlet, equally exercise
this privilege...A local elective magistracy is formed, which prevents the central
government from goading the people to insurrection by the insolence of office which the
inferior agents of an ill-organized administration constantly display.20
King Ottos reign, and the 1844 constitution, Finlay thought, had both undermined this
historically proven system. He stated this bluntly in his History. The attempt which the Greeks
made in 1844 to lay the foundations of good government on constitutional theories, he wrote,
was rendered abortive by the want of national institutions for local administration, or what is
now generally called self-government.21 The primacy given to Parliament in lawmaking and the
widespread influence of the Court through bribery and ballot-stuffing had prevented local control
from once again taking hold. As such, the current Greek government had not arisen organically.
The constitution of 1844, Finlay wrote, was not the production of the national mind. Greece
had no Lycurgus to make laws for the attainment of theoretic excellence, nor any Solon to devise
19
Blackwoods, May 1850, 531-2.

Unsigned, The Bankruptcy of the Greek Kingdom in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine 54, no. 352 (September
1843): 352.
21
the Present Time: B. C. 146 To A. D. 1864. Volume VII: The Greek Revolution, Part II: Establishment of the Greek
Kingdom (New York: AMS Press, 1970): 185.
20
li
remedies for existing evils. Foreigners still held the reins of government. For example, the
municipal system...Maurer had converted into an engine for rivetting the fetters of centralization
on the local magistrates; it was nether revived as a defence for the peoples rights, nor adapted
to aid the progress of Greek society.22
Universal suffrage, even when executed honestly, only granted the people the most
abstract control, for it did not allow them any practical influence even in the affairs of their
smallest towns and rural districts. Every person in Greece is supposed to be capable of choosing
legislators, but not mayors, aldermen, and provincial councillors.23 Finlay elevated this ability to
a sovereign right. The section of the constitution which determines the public rights of the
Greek citizen, he wrote, omits all reference to those rights in his position [as] a member of a
municipality and a provincial district.24 Consequently, only the interests of the people relating to
the central government could ever, even in theory, be heard. Not even elections to the National
Assembly were decided on a local basis, as Greece has been divided into large electoral
districts, and, therefore, neither the rural population nor the inhabitants of the towns can make
sure of returning any man in whom they have confidence. This manner of dividing the country
enables Government officials to control the elections.25
In case none of these arguments impressed themselves on British readers, Finlay invoked
the spectre of instability, the fear of which had led Britain to impose a monarchy on Greece in
the first place. The want of a proper sphere of energy for a large class of the population is
evidently preparing Greece for a series of revolutions, he warned. A centralised administration,
without the control of a municipal organisation, tends naturally to revolution. To remove a
22
Finlay, History VII, 178.

24
25
Blackwoods, November 1863, 589.
23
lii
parish grievance, it becomes necessary to overthrow a ministerit is easier to make a
revolution than obtain a reform.26 By contrast, what remained of local governance was
responsible for the tranquillity of the country.27 Local government was, he wrote, a wise
arrangement, and it has proved a powerful engine for the preservation of order amidst a
population accustomed to anarchy, revolution, and despotism. It also served a constitutional
function as a stabilizing check against despotism, forming, Finlay added, a firm barrier against
the tyrannical aspirations of the Bavarians.28 Indeed, he asserted, Greeces informal constitution
was what had preserved it through years of invasion and occupation. What were the actual
means of government in the country...which had enabled the Greeks to maintain [the War of
Independence] against Sultaun Mahmoud and Mahommed Ali for seven years? he asked.
Enthusiasm and patriotism are good words in a debate, and may explain the events of a single
campaign; but common sense tells every one that a people must possess some administrative
institutions, in order to persist in a desperate struggle for many successive years.29
From Greek Liberty in Britain to British Liberty for Greece

Without the moral and intellectual faculties that would develop upon its adoption, the
Greeks could not revive their organic constitution themselves. Only foreign intervention could
fully emancipate Greece from its medieval condition. The tranquillity of Europe, Finlay
asserted, requires that the independence of Greece should be suspended, and the country remain
26

Blackwoods, September 1843, 352.
28
Blackwoods, September 1843, 353.
29
Blackwoods, May 1850, 529-530. Finlay also noted that, while the Greeks are in the habit of boasting that their
Church preserved their nationality under the Turks,..the subserviency of the great body of the Greek clergy during
that period, and the readiness with which they acted as spies and policemen for the Othoman government allowed
him to conclude that the people, having perpetuated their existence by the toleration of their conquerors, preserved
their nationality by their municipal organization, and that this preservation of their nationality was the cause of their
ecclesiastical establishment surviving. See Blackwoods, October 1854, 408.
27
liii
30
in the power of a foreign force. This would ensure that the country not break out into the
open rebellion or anarchy he had foreseen as the inevitable consequences of the 1844
constitution.
Finlay gathered much evidence for this proposition from the conduct of the foreign troops
stationed in Greek ports during the Crimean War.31 This occupation, Finlay wrote, proved
...extremely useful to Greece, by stimulating improvement in many ways. The British and
French found Athens port like a straggling village, yet the French soldiers, with their usual
intelligent activity, cleared the streets, and turned a large open space, which had long been
impassable from the filth with which it was encumbered, into a handsome public garden.32
Minor as this improvement was given the state of the Greek economy, it symbolised, for
Finlay, what greater industry could achieve.
Even the illiberal tendencies of the occupying powers, he believed, ought not be resisted;
such was the inevitable wisdom of their approach. In his journal he wrote that, unable to bear
the insolence of the press which the govt would not prosecute, France and Britain had seized
an editor & destroyed a printing press. Thus the Greeks by their own incapacity & childish
impotent rage will again forge fetters for themselves.33 Indeed, he wrote to Blackwoods that
if [Greeces] national vanity force it into collision with any of the great actors on the
scene, it may be brushed rudely aside, and sink back into the insignificant position it has
held ever since the Franks conquered Constantinople and founded principalities in Greece
in 1204. Hellenism and orthodoxy must yield to philanthropy and Christian civilisation.
To us the future is dark; but of one thing we are assured, that the occupation of Greece by
allied troops was absolutely necessary to enable any ministry to commence the task of
30

Greece, having declared its intention to take advantage of the war to attack Turkey and liberate ethnic Greek
communities, had been blockaded to ensure that the stated aim of Britain and France, the preservation of the
Ottoman Empire, was not compromised.
32
Blackwoods, November 1863, ?
33
Entry of 14 October 1854 in J.M. Hussey ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume I: The Journals
31
liv
improvement in the kingdom of Greece.
34
Given his disapproval of French constitutionalism, as a form of abstract political principle

without reference to local conditions,35 and the generally illiberal tendencies of Greeces other
protecting power, Russia, Finlay thought it was evident that Britain would have to take on the
task of bringing Christian civilisation to Greece.
Finlay did not chose Britain solely by process of elimination. The country was, in fact,
evolving something akin to the local governance Finlay prescribed for Greece. This is
corroborated by Philip Harling, who writes that in those spheres in which the role of
government was indeed expanding in the Victorian era, most of the expansion was restricted to
the local level. Coping with urban-industrial growth was very largely a local responsibility.36
Participatory engagement in society also allowed for some degree of self-governance,
according to Peter Mandler. Britains laissez-faire economy, he writes, was underpinned by an
extensive network of disciplines, of centres of authority apart and alongside state intervention in
society.37 Freedom was not absolute, but constructed through a set of relationship and
definitions of what individual actions are tolerable or even conceivable. In other words,
standards of behavior helped ensure that liberty existed within the context of a self-regulating
populace. Order and regulation were internalised in the Foucauldian sense.38 As Jonathan Parry
writes, in general, liberty was seen as complementary to law, justice, and the States
responsibility to improve morality and character. It was not to be confused with license, with
34
Blackwoods, October 1854, 421; my italics.

Finlays France was a chimera; actual French policy in Greece was actually quite akin to his own proposals. See
the speeches of Franois Guizot quoted in Theodore P. Ion, The Hellenic Crisis from the Point of View of
Constitutional and International Law, The American Journal of International Law 11, no. 1 (January 1917): 56-7.
35
36
Philip Harling, The Powers of the Victorian State, in Peter Mandler, ed. Liberty and Authority in Victorian
Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006): 43; my italics.
37
Peter Mandler, Introduction in Mandler ed., Liberty and Authority, 1.
38
Mandler, Introduction in Mandler ed., Liberty and Authority, 11.
lv
39
doing as one likes. The fusion of liberty and responsibility found its apotheosis in the
association, which at the same time brought order to the public and existed at arms length from
the government. The libertarian environment of Victorian Britain... fostered the development of
solidaristic infrastructures within civil society without counterposing them too aggressively
against the State, Mandler writes of these. Fewer people felt completely excluded or
marginalised.40 Institutions like the establishment Church bred support for the state even within
this autonomous sphere. Mandler refers to these as para-statal organizations with no official
or only quasi-official standing. These were so integral to the maintenance of order that such
political institutions exercised authority not only through their direct application but also
through the cultural prestige attaching...to the ill-defined English Constitution.41
Many British liberal thinkers expressed admiration for local self-government, and
advocated its expansion. Among these was Finlays friend and correspondent John Stuart Mill,
who, investigating the historical antecedents of this model, located it in the constitution of
ancient Athens. Mills precedent for the increasing devolution and liberalization of British
governance was that same ancient Greek constitution that served as Finlays model. Mills
Greek intoxication has been recently recovered by prominent Mill scholars including E. F.
Biagini42 and Nadia Urbinati. Indeed, writes Urbinati, Mill was confident early on that a
renaissance of classical studies would help to refine a method of intellectual inquiry consistent
with the democratization of modern political institutions and the growth of a deliberative
practice, goals he believed were exemplified by that historical period. He had spent his youth
translating the dialogues of Plato, and the beliefs which would later become immortalised in his
39
Jonathan P. Parry, Liberalism and Liberty, in Mandler ed, Liberty and Authority 72.
Mandler, Introduction in Mandler ed., Liberty and Authority, 20; my italics.
41
Mandler, Introduction in Mandler ed., Liberty and Authority, 4.
42
See especially E. F. Biagini, Radicalism and Liberty in Mandler ed., Liberty and Authority, 107-8.
40
lvi
essays On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government were presaged in his
reviews of the work of another historian of Greece, George Grote.43 Mill...held up the Athenian
republic as evidence that democracy could bear constitutional limits, and was in fact a selfconstraining form of self government, Urbinati writes.44 While Mill, then, was advancing a
theory which justified expanding British liberties on the basis of Athenian precedent, Finlay
compared the vestiges of ancient Greek society with English institutions, or what we call, in
conversation, the English constitution, which was something totally different from this spawn
of modern political quackery, Gallic constitutionalism.45 Finlay, therefore, linked by
contemporary analogy what Mill had given a common ancestor.
The Angel of the North Proclaimed that Greece Again was Free
What Finlay called for, then, was the Greek homecoming of an idea of liberty one born
in Greece, and now residing in Britain. The various poems and songs Finlay chose to
complement his pieces in Blackwoods provide evidence that it was specifically British liberty
that would enable the restoration of Greeces classical constitution. One article, for example, was
followed by a long satirical poem comparing Britains efforts to secure Greek independence in
the 1820s with its inadequate advocacy of good government in the present day. The first stanza
begins with the scene upon Britains liberation of Greece:
Joyfully the bells are ringing
In the old Athenian town
Gaily to Piraeus harbour
43
Nadia Urbinati, Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2002): 3. Mill, in fact, owed much of his analysis of Athenian democracy to Grote, whose
History of Greece vindicated the comparison between ancient Greek and modern British liberty. See Frank Turner,
The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981): 213-234. Grote never drew this
connection explicitly, however, nor, unlike Mill, did he extent his argument to the local level. Unlike Finlay, he did
not tie his History to modern Greece, either.
44
Urbinati, Mill on Democracy, 6.
45
lvii
Stream the merry people down;
For they see the fleet of Britain
Proudly steering to their shore,
Underneath the Christian banner
That they knew so well of yore,
When the guns at Navarino thundered oer the sea
And the Angel of the North proclaimed that Greece again was free.46
While these heroes of yore like Jason and his Argonauts, present day British politicians fail to
live up to their predecessors glory, and are exhorted to once again prove Britains worth:
Ancient chief! that sailed with Jason
Oer the wild and stormy waves
Let not sounds of later triumphs
Stir you in your quiet graves
Other Argonauts have ventured
To your old Hellenic shore,
But they will not live in story
Like the valiant men of yore
O! tis more than shame and sorrow thus to jest upon a theme
That for Britains fame and glory, all would wish to be a dream.47
The means by which glory could be attained again are more concretely explored in the
Philhellenes Drinking-song with which Finlay accompanied an earlier piece. Come let us
drink their memory, the song begins,
Those glorious Greeks of old
On shore and sea the Famed, the Free
The Beautiful- the Bold!
The mind or mirth that lights each page,
Or bowl by which we sit,
Is sunfire pilfered from their age
Gems splintered from their wit
Then, drink and swear by Greece, that there
Though Rhenish huns may thrive
In Britain we the liberty
She loved will keep alive.48
Unlike the previous verse, this piece does not necessarily exhort Britain to action. It does,
46
Blackwoods, May 1850, 540. The poem is entitled The Modern Argonauts.
48
Blackwood's, September 1843, 345. The song is ascribed to one B. Simmons.
47
lviii
however, draw a direct link between Greeces essential constitution, and Britains
contemporary one.49 Echoing Mill, it depicts Britain as the repository of ancient Greek liberty.
Taking these verses together, it is evident that Finlay was urging Britain to guarantee Greeces
full liberation; it was duty-bound to return its successful political inheritance to Greece.
Finlay was, therefore, actively concerned with Britains direct influence on the Greek
constitution or lack thereof. In 1848 he wrote that Britain was more concerned with fulfilling its
own immediate objectives than with reform of the Greek government.50 When Britain did
become involved in the Greek constitutional question, it often lent its support to the inorganic,
written constitutions Finlay despised. He opined that the revolution in 1843 afforded the British
cabinet an opportunity of putting our relations with Greece on a proper footing; but the
opportunity was lost. Instead of English influence being employed to restore the national
institutions destroyed by the Bavarians, those composing Greeces natural constitution, it
supported the establishment of what is called the [written] constitutional form of government.
Such documents, Finlay asserted, were compilations of political commonplace which the
lawgivers of our age are ready, at a weeks notice, to prepare either for Greenland or China.51
They contained only chimerical notions of abstract, in contrast to practical, liberty.52
A Revolution Toward Britishness? Finlays Influence and the Events of 1862-3

How did Finlay influence British policy toward Greece during this period? For one, he
was certainly well-connected. Palmerston, Gladstone, and Mill were close acquaintances. Mill in
particular extended Finlays influence and proved an invaluable source of publicity. When Finlay
49
It also indicates that keeping Greek liberty alive in Britain was one means to spite the Rhenish hun stalking
Greece. This terminology introduces a parallel between 19th century Greece and 18th century Britain, in which
widespread contempt for a similarly aloof, Germanic dynasty (the Hanoverians) was expressed in like terms.
50
Finlay to Leake, 19 June 1848, in Letters, 635.
51
52
lix
sent him a memo on Greek affairs with his recommendations, Mill called it an important
memoir and hoped to shew as yours to any one who may be in a position to benefit by it. He
asserted that I have learnt very much from the paper, and claimed he agreed with most of
Finlays ideas.53 In a passage of Considerations on Representative Government, moreover, Mill
acknowledged some very Finlayesque criticisms of governance in Greece. In the modern
kingdom of Greece, he wrote, it can hardly be doubted, that [those] who chiefly compose the
representative assemblycontribute little or nothing directly to good government, nor even
much temper the arbitrary power of the executive.54
In addition to his friends in high places, Finlays appearance on the pages of
Blackwoods came during the high point of its influence and circulation. Finlay contributed
pieces to many other British periodicals during this period, including the Daily News, the
Scotsman, the Saturday Review, the Morning Herald, the Morning Chronicle, the Evening Star,
and the Spectator.55 His was a voice that would have been familiar to many in the halls of
Parliament and among the British intelligentsia. He was, moreover, one of the only independent
British observers in contemporary Greece; the others were either tradesmen or members of the
corps diplomatique.56 The rest were not nearly as prolific, nor did they command the authority
that Finlay did as a historian. Only George Grote, considered an eminent expert on Greece,
was more influential as a historian, and he had, in fact, never visited the country.
53
Robson, Letters of Mill, 812.

J. M. Robson ed. The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill Vol. XIX: Essays on Politics and Society by John Stuart
Mill, Part II (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991): 415. Though Mill goes on to note that the assemblymen
keep up the idea of popular rights, this only an acknowledges of the pretense of Greek democracy.
55
William Miller, George Finlay as a Journalist, The English Historical Review 39, no. 156. (October 1924): 552567.
56
It is, of course, difficult to make such a negative proof, for the comparative absence of other writers on
contemporary Greece. It is perhaps sufficient to say that no other Greece experts are cited in letters and
Parliamentary papers regarding Greece during the period, nor are any recognizably non-Finlay arguments presented;
the only considerations regarding policy toward Greece which Finlay would not have approved of were made on the
basis of foreign policy principle, rather than contradictory reports from the ground.
54
lx
When speaking on Greece, many powerful politicians adopted rhetoric and arguments
similar to Finlays. Given his widespread name-recognition, and the lack of competition for onthe-scene renderings of Greek affairs, it is reasonable to speculate that this was the direct
consequence of his political advocacy. Of course, the belief that Greece ought to imitate British
institutions and liberties was widespread before Finlay began his writing career. In the 1830s, Sir
Robert Peel hoped the Greeks would be able to enjoy liberties similar to those of Britain, by
recover[ing] from the torpor of long slavery and enabled to emulate the glory of their
predecessors, while at the same time they enjoy all the advantages that arise from the
progress of knowledge and from the establishment of those institutions which in happy
countries like this are calculated to ensure the possession of civil and religious liberty.57
Yet it was Finlay who had exhaustively catalogued how and why this recovery was not
happening. While few concurred with his proposals for direct intervention, many came to assess
actions in Greece through much the same lens as Finlay.
Viscount Palmerstons rhetoric more closely reflected Finlays. His was the government
in power during the critical years of the early 1860s, when another Greek revolution was on the
verge of breaking out. Palmerston often wondered why free Greece had not flowered into the
Renaissance foreordained by German scholars. If on being rescued from...despotism, [the
Greeks] should not at once manifest those capacities for the arts of government, which are
peculiar to the inhabitants of more favoured countries, observed Palmerston, we ought to
consider the circumstances from which that incapacity for the arts of government may be
supposed to have arisen.58
57
Theodore P. Ion, The Hellenic Crisis, 53. The comparison between the English Civil War, the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, and the European revolutions erupting in the 1840s was indeed frequent. Such comparisons
came to an end, however, by the 1850s. See Miles Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995): 194-5. In the case of Greece, though, they carried through to the 1860s, when they were
again used in force suggesting that Finlay may have preserved British liberals hopes for Greece even through a
sea change in Britains foreign affairs.
58
Debate of 15 August 1843 in Hansards Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, Volume LXXI (July-August, 1843)
(London: T. C. Hansard, 1843): 808.
lxi
This was the question Finlay had considered while writing his History. Both his and
Palmerstons answers were remarkably similar; the problem was the friction between the Greeks
natural constitution and their present condition. Palmerston was inclined, in this vein, to see
Greek unrest in a more positive light. As early as 1843, he argued, with Finlay, that a man must
be blind to the natural character of the Greeksif he thinks that Greece can be governed without
a representative assembly.59 By 1863, Palmerston claimed that the Greeks, laboring under Otto
for decades, possessed a latent principle of subordination and order which must give rise to a
feeling of encouragementin those who are called upon to take a part in managing their
affairs.60 Greeks protesting the 1844 constitution were striving to reach the full potential (selfmanagement) of this essential nature, which, as Finlay had noted, manifested itself throughout
Greek history. They
retain[ed] for long periods of time their peculiar character, varying only according to the
circumstances under which they happen to be placed. The Greeks of the present day
retain many of the high intellectual qualities which led the former inhabitants of their
country to the pitch of civilization which they attained.61
Others shared Palmerstons and Finlays arguments about the character of the Greeks. The
blood of Periclesdid not flow in the veins of the modern Greeks, but they still cherished the
old traditions, observed one parliamentarian.62
When another rebellion broke out in October 1862, reports to Parliament indicate that
Britain was concerned it threatened this vital regions stability.63 Nevertheless, much of the
scholarship concerned with the British reaction discusses the succession crisis that ensued when
59
Debate of 15 August 1843 in Hansards 3, LXXI, 795.

Debate of 16 March 1863 in Hansards Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, Volume CLXIX (London: T. C.
Hansard, 1863): 1531.
61
Ion, Hellenic Crisis, 55.
62
Debate of 16 March 1863 in Hansards 3, CLXIX, 1490.
63
Parliamentary Papers no. 3073, Vol. LXXVIII, Correspondence Respecting the Revolution in Greece: October
1862" (London: Harrison and Son, 1863): 5-20.
60
lxii
64
King Otto fled the country. It hardly questions why Britain, which had helped place Otto on
the throne, occupied Athens during the Crimean War, and always exhibited trepidation with
regard to Greek populists irredentist nationalism, would tolerate yet another expansion of Greek
democracy, conceded to a revolutionary mob. Parliament itself felt the need to publish a
statement reassuring Greece that intervention was not imminent.65
Given Finlays publicity, his argument that only the ancient constitution of Greece could
provide effective stability, and his assertion, undergirded by Mills writings, that this system
resembled the evidently thriving British constitution, the answer to this conundrum seems
clearer. The revolution had ousted Otto, whom Finlay had been castigating as oriental. It also
hinted at the implementation of local, participatory government. The British government, in fact,
offered tacit support for the revolution, both because it believed it had brought Greece closer to
its essential constitution and because it hoped to cultivate, in Greece, Britishness.
Monckton Milnes argued the former proposition, hewing to Finlays arguments closely.
Greeces people have shown a self-command which is the real foundation of all freedom he
spoke in their support in Parliament. It is this, he continued, which has led Her Majestys
Government to join with the rest of Europe in according to the Greeks their best sympathy and
approbation. What was the foundation of self-command? Greeces municipal institutions,
which, in the olden times,
carried her through under the Roman Empire, and later they enabled her to survive
through the Byzantine period and under the domination of the Turks. They have been a
considerable agent in the liberation of the country. Why should she notrevert to
those institutions? Why, with the aid of these institutions, should not Greece continue?66
64
See Eleutherios Prebelakes, British Policy Towards the Change in Dynasty in Greece, 1862-3 (Athens: selfpublished, 1953).
65
See the parliamentary statement of October 1862 quoted in Finlay, History VII, 275-6. Here, the British
government is forced to note that it had no intention to intervene during the revolution.
66
Debate of 16 March 1863 in Hansard 3, CLXIX, 1491-3.
lxiii
These arguments very closely resembled Finlays contentions about the role of municipal
institutions in Greek history.
Lord John Russell, meanwhile, noted the similarity of the Greek situation to the English
Civil War. The people of Greece, he asserted, acted as this country had acted about two
centuries since...surely there is no want of wisdom in that course. In contrast to the French, who
in 1848 had deposed their king and declared a new republic, the Greeks had expressed their
gratitude toward the three Protecting Powers; anddeclared their determination to have a
constitutional monarchy.67
Finlays rhetoric also provides an answer as to why, when a plebiscite to help determine
the next leader of Greece was won by Queen Victorias son, Prince Alfred, observers ascribed
this event, and the revolution which had preceded it, to the inherent affection Greeks felt for the
British constitution. The election was a due appreciation of the benefits conferred by the
principles and practice of the British Constitution, claimed the Queen.68 Lord John Russell
concurred. The great confidence felt by the Greeks in the constitutional principles by which Her
Majesty has always been guided, he wrote, has no doubt been the main cause of the
spontaneous enthusiasm which has been elicited by the mention of the name of His Royal
Highness Prince Alfred as King of Greece.69 Finlay himself wrote that the election of Prince
Alfred evoked a vague hope that an English prince would give Greece some of the advantages
enjoyed by England.70 For his country, his family, and his education offered those guarantees
which gave assurance that he would govern constitutionally, and would render his reign
67
Debate of 16 April 1863 in Hansards Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, Volume CLXX (London: T. C.
Hansard, 1863): 182. Emphasis added.
68
69
70
lxiv
prosperous to the nation.
71
Beyond non-intervention, Britain considered offering Greece a prize for its revolution
toward Britishness: the Ionian Islands, an Aegean archipelago that Britain had governed since
seizing them from Napoleon, and which were considered by many to be as strategically
significant as Gibraltar.72 A long debate preceded the transfer, during which many declared that
they would only consent to a handover to a well-governed and tranquil Greece a Greece
which would do them justice, and continue the good Government they had hitherto enjoyed
under Britains liberal rule.73 The islands should only be transferred, another member of
parliament argued, in the hope that increased territory might come to them, not by violence,
conspiracy, or aggression, but by such an example of good government that should induce other
nations to cluster around them by a sort of natural gravitation.74 The proposal for transfer was
adopted; the majority, at least, were convinced that Greeces government had been placed on a
sufficiently firm basis to administer what was formerly British soil.75
And while Palmerston would have never actively intervened to support the creation of a
new, more British constitution in Greece, he surely favored its internal development. Its
successful implementation would have been all the more evidence that British institutions were
alluring. As E. D. Steele has written of the Palmerston of the 1860s, he was no crusader for
constitutionalism abroad, trusting to time and example to diffuse the influence of British
institutions. Yet he would not have tolerated just any revolution that was likely to lead to further
71

Queens Speech of 5 February, 1863 in Hansard 3, CLXIX , 2-3.
73
Speech of Mr. Cave during the Debate of 16 March 1863 in Hansard 3, CLXIX,1526.
74
Mr. Gregorys speech during the Debate of 16 March 1863 in Hansard 3, CLXIX, 1490.
75
Bruce Knox writes that the transfer had more to do with the frustrating reality of governing the islands, and cites
Palmerstons assertion that they had not been of military value since 1815. See British policy and the Ionian
Islands, 1847-1864: nationalism and imperial administration, The English Historical Review 399, no. 392 (July
1984): 503-529. Although this may account for the governments motion for transfer, it cannot account for the
individual rhetoric of the many MPs who supported the proposal out of enthusiasm for the newly Anglicized state
of Greece.
72
lxv
outbreaks in the future. He was justifiably apprehensive, Steele continues, lest the British
traditions of freedom should be so abused as to discredit her true political self.76 As the Greek
revolt was grounded so deeply in the spirit of Britains own traditions, it was evidently one
which Palmerston, if he were indeed following Finlay, had little reason to fear.
Many Greeks commented on the irony of British warships both bringing and taking away King Otto, depicted here.
The expulsion of King Otto in 1862 as portrayed in a popular colour lithograph. From the website of the Hellenic
Ministry of Culture, http://www.culture.gr/4/42/421/42103/42103e/e42103e3.html (accessed 9 April 2007). Both his
arrival and departure were seen, ironically, as Westernizing processes. By the late 19th century, Greece had made
at least superficial progress toward Western-ness, if the attire in the below depiction of Parliament serves as any
guide. Oil painting of a session of the Parliament, with Harilaos Trikoupis at the podium, at the end of the 19th
century, by N. Orlof. From the permanent collection of the National Historical Museum, Athens. Taken from the
website of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, http://www.culture.gr/4/42/421/42103/42103e/e42103e3.html,
(accessed 9 April 2007).
76
E. D. Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991): 247. See
also Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity, and Europe 1830-1886
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 4, 15, which argues that Britain was intent on projecting an image
of itself as an ideal constitutional state throughout the mid-19th century, and supported nationalist revolutions to the
degree they conformed to this notion.
lxvi
Chapter IV. The Re-Orientalization of Greece, 1864-1875

THOUGH HE MUST have been surprised that the Greeks had reclaimed their essential
constitution without direct British support, George Finlays reaction to the 1862 revolution was
jubilant. The new constitution implemented participatory, municipal government, and, he wrote,
punished many of those who violated the constitution of 1844.1 Democratic participation
permeated every level of government. Finlay thrilled that the whole country is occupied with
nothing but the elections of mayors, alderman & municipal councillors. This is the most
important measure for the future government of Greece which has occurred.2
Yet the constitution of 1864 did not, in fact, prove to be a panacea for Greeces many
problems. Finlay soon complained that local government had not been instituted as completely or
as perfectly as it had been in the past, and that Greeks were far too fixated on territorial
expansion to take measure of their own material condition. With a constitutional solution to
1
Finlay to Mill in J. M. Hussey ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume II: Finlay-Leake and Other
Correspondence (Athens: Porphyrogenitus, 1995): 824-5.
2
George to Alexander Finlay in Letters, 827.
lxvii
Greeces endemic corruption and underdevelopment seeming less and less feasible, Finlay
began to advocate methods of provoking economic prosperity that were much less specific to
Greece and much less in line with Westernization.
The new path he laid out for Greece had more in common with British policy toward
Cairo or Constantinople than with the character of government in Britain itself, or with any
essential aspects of Greek governance. His plan, in fact, resembled the indirect colonization
Britain pursued exclusively outside Europe. Finlays hope for Greece joining Europe faded;
the most it could aspire to was leadership in the East. This shift provides evidence of how
Finlay and his British audience defined the West and Europe and why Greece
continued to be defined outside this zone throughout the 19th century.
The Limits of Legislation

Corruption and instability continued to be major themes in Greek politics. From 1870 to
1875, four elections took place in Greece, and nine governments rose and fell. The king no
longer bribed elected representatives; instead, political parties were organized as patronage
rackets, trading civil service positions in exchange for votes. Legislators appeared more
preoccupied with legal loopholes than enforcement,3 and brigandage remained a severe problem.
It must be said, Finlay wrote, that the Greeks have not done their duty. They have sold their
future prosperity for present salary.4
Only a year after the new constitution was adopted, Finlay was seeking changes to amend
its faults. He suggested that the newly restored local governments were simply inexperienced at
allocating resources. Perhaps some great initiative by the central government, such as a public
3
Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Modern Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 61-63.
Entry of 27 October 1868 in J. M. Hussey ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume I: The Journals
4
lxviii
works project, would prove both stimulating and instructive for newly empowered locals;
they needed, he reasoned, to be educated on the merits of public investment. I have ceased to
have much hope of seeing any great improvement in the central government until I see the
large revenues possessed by the municipalities devoted to objects of public utility, he wrote.5 He
even considered that more power for the king might be a good thing.
These sentiments betray Finlays decreasing trust in Greeks, which manifested itself in
the articles he wrote during this period as Greece correspondent for the Times. No longer
promoting individual Greeks entrepreneurial capabilities, which had motivated his earlier
advocacy of self-government, he argued for capitulations to the concessionaires, industrialists
who gained favors from the Greek government in exchange for investment. The process by
which British and French capitalists gained control over Greeces economic resources, in fact,
appears to have paralleled the increasing stake they held in Turkey, Egypt, and Persia.6
Increasingly, the British state took on the position of such investors guarantor, intervening in
local affairs to guarantee their solvency. Thus, some have argued, Britain gained an informal
empire of free trade that encompassed, among other regions, todays Middle East. 7
As he advocated similar investments in Greece during this period, Finlay must have been
aware of the implications. Earlier, his arguments had placed Greek liberalism on par not only
with liberal nationalisms across Europe, but with British liberalism as well. Now, by advocating
the application of policies Britain employed solely outside Europe,8 and specifically in what is
5
Finlay to C. T. Netwon, 7 December 1865, in Letters, 823.

See James Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004): 81-4.
7
This idea was first expressed by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, The Imperialism of Free Trade in
Economic History Review, 2nd series VI (1953): 1-15. Since, it has encountered many criticisms; see especially
Martin Lynn, Policy, Trade, and Informal Empire in Andrew Porter, ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire,
Volume III: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999): 101-122 for a comprehensive
account. Lynn suggests that the informally colonized territories may not have been as tied to Britain as Robinson
and Gallagher alleged. Nevertheless, he does not dispute the fact that 19th century Britons believed they held such
immense power over, say, Latin America or the Ottoman Empire.
8
Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity, and Europe 1830-1886
6
lxix
9
today termed the Middle East, he was helping not only to re-orient Greece, but to reOrientalize it. Such a move, moreover, underscored Finlays shift away from any emphasis on
Greeces specific character of local self government.
A letter to Finlay from two of his admirers demonstrates how his emphasis on foreign
investment was incompatible with his former emphasis on the individual. If [the concessions]
would lead to waste places being settled, and roads made, and peasants employed, local
entrepreneurs losing money would not be a concern, they wrote. Landholders rights, they
continued, were obstructive. The [under-cultivated] marshes have become what they are
because of the rights of certain private persons! However, a company of rich London and
Liverpool merchants might drain the marshes and become possessed of an immense extent of
valuable land. Such a scheme would employ many, helping to reduce chronic joblessness, and
improve health in the region.10 Previously, Finlay had been among the most vociferous
champions of private land rights, going so far as to demand the British government intervene
when his own property was seized. His later contempt for private property demonstrates a
growing respect for methods similar to the Ottos arbitrary rule methods he had linked to
eastern despotism.
Oriental Irredentists, Occidental Ottomans?

Eventually, Finlays editors at the Times grew tired of his redundant contempt for
Greeces government and people. I think Greeces friends ought now to giver her every
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006) argues that British liberals view of Europe shifted, by the 1870s,
away from support for nationalist agitation (see Chapter 7). This appears to be consistent with Finlays turn against
liberalism in Greece. Yet his move toward the concessions model Britain employed in the Middle East was not.
Parry looks to the Eastern Question to demonstrate the shift in Britains mentality toward Europe, but fails to
recognize the categorical dissociation between the eastern Mediterranean Near East and the rest of Europe.
9
This term did not, in fact, originate until the Second World War.
10
Georgina and Charles Sebright to Finlay, March 1873, in Letters, 855-7.
lxx
encouragement [and] abstain from hostile criticism, one wrote to him. Although Finlay
believed his critiques would help foster the improvement of Greece, his rhetoric increasingly
betrayed a relative admiration for the Ottoman Empire at Greeces expense. More and more, he
portrayed Greece as the more irredeemably backward and oriental of the two, as his faith in
the potential Westernization of Greece was diminished.
Finlays newfound admiration for the Ottomans derived from his disdain of the pursuit of
the Megali Idea (Great Idea), the driving thrust of Greek foreign policy. This was an irredentist
nationalism in the form of pan-Slavism; its aim was to reintegrate ethnic Greeks left outside
Greece into an expanded state. A more extreme version posited that Greece should replace the
Ottoman Empire entirely, reconstituting Byzantium and subsequently Westernizing much of
Anatolia and the Levant. The answer to the question what is Greece? Orient or Occident?
wrote philosopher of history Markos Renieris, was that Hellas gave birth to the very distinction
East-West, by being herself the West and by assuming the mission of westernizing the East, of
distinguishing and exalting human individuality from the chaos of Oriental pantheism.11 Finlay
had long agreed with such sentiments. In the late 1860s, he asserted that the greek race in virtue
of its position must always exercise great influence in accelerating or retarding progress of
enlightened reform & self-government in the East.
He later indicated, however, that the greek kingdom has exhibited nothing but a
succession of preposterous projects & of moral & political failures.12 Greece was simply not
prepared to take on the burden of the civilizing mission in the eastern Mediterranean; it was
too materially weak to engage the Ottoman Empire. The greeks would do well to examine their
11
Georgios Varouxakis, The Idea of Europe in Nineteenth Century Greek Political Thought in Philip Carabott,
ed. Greece and Europe in the Modern Period: Aspects of a Troubled Relationship (London: School of Humanities,
Kings College London, 1995): 21.
12
See Finlays tract on Greco-Turkish relations (Undated, between 1868 and 1870) in Letters, 842.
lxxi
own resources for maintaining a contest with the Sultans government, he wrote to the
Times, before they plunge into irreconcilable hostilities.13 A war of conquest requiring the
supply of far off armies would inevitably collapse in the face of Greek poverty. This did not
make Finlay opposed to the Megali Idea. He simply urged Greece to wait until it was capable of
taking on the Ottoman state. Better ploughs are more wanted than better speeches in order to
defeat the Ottomans, he wrote. Good government, he concluded, ought to precede any
extension of the limits of the Greek kingdom on the Continent.14
Finlay, therefore, watched with consternation as Greece aided irredentist rebels in Crete15
and other Greek-majority provinces of the Ottoman Empire, denigrating the character of these
fighters. There are still about 300 armed vagabonds stalking up & down on Mount Ida, looking
for the goats of the mussulmans and not for the haunts of Jupiter, he wrote of Greek
insurrectionists in Crete. And the insurgents with the noble contempt for exactness in figures
which distinguishes the Oriental mind, report that they were still slaughtering Turks by the
thousands weekly.16
At this point, Finlay threw his favor to the Ottomans. If the Sultans armies were also
oriental, they were, at least, organized. The greeks believe that everything that occurs
presages the fall of the Ottoman empire, he wrote. But when the real national tug of war
comesthe greeks may find that in warlike resources and military qualities the Turks will be for
some years as much their superiors.17 His estimation of the post-war situation in Crete bore out
similar admiration for Ottoman capabilities. The pacification of the island of Crete & the
13
Finlay to the Times, 21 March 1867, in Letters 829-30.

Times of 15 May 1869, 10 June 1865, and 20 October 1866, quoted in William Miller, George Finlay as a
Journalist, The English Historical Review 39, no. 156 (October 1924): 557-60.
15
A Greek irredentist insurrection broke out in Crete in 1866.
16
Finlay to the Times, 21 March 1867, in Letters, 831. Emphasis added.
17
Finlay to the Times, 21 March 1867, in Letters, 832.
14
lxxii
restoration of the agricultural population to its prosperous condition before the[y] were
ravaged by the revolutionary enterprises of Hellenism are reported to be advancing steadily
under the prudent administration of the governor general Hussein Pasha, he observed. Not only
was Greece responsible for disrupting the prosperity of Crete during the insurrection, however.
The Greek government and people, he continued, have adopted a line of conduct avowedly
for the purpose of retarding as much as possible the re-establishent of tranquillity. Finlay went
on to accuse Greece of disturbing the peace of Europe, and wondered what measures the
Ottoman Empire could take under international law to end Greek interference.18
Finlays observations during the Cretan affair contributed to a dramatically different
assessment of the Ottoman state than that held by the Philhellenes of his youth. His affinities for
the empire had been increasing ever since his first visit to Constantinople in 1829. Finding the
Ottoman capital, at first, a strange and barbarouscity of the dead, 19 Finlay left wondering
who can see Turkey now without feeling that they are not the Tartars who conquered Asia &
terrified Europe.20 His stereotypes of the Orient broke down further when he visited Egypt in
1845. Nothing seemed wanting...to give the Egyptian army a degree of physical power which
would make every power in Europe reflect on the hazards of ever venturing to attack it, he
observed.21 Finlay eventually realized that most travelers to these countries possessed only a
limited understanding of what they saw, and that European prejudices were in spite of
reason.22 Such beliefs had, earlier, given him the impression that Turkey and Egypt were just as
capable of material progress as Greece.23 Now, they led him to conclude that the Ottoman
18
Tract on Greco-Turkish relations in Letters, 838-9. Emphasis added.

Entries of 2-5 July, 1829 in Journals 10-12. It is interesting to note that Finlay is also rumored to have met his
wife in Constantinople, an Armenian woman with whom he eloped up the Bosphorus and married on a ship.
20
21
Entry of 1845 in Journals 264.
22
Entry of 1845 in Journals 264.
23
See Chapter Two.
19
lxxiii
Empire may have been, in fact, more Westernizeable.
While Greece had failed to prioritize Westernization, the Ottoman Empires ability to
assure at least basic order and prosperity led Finlay to conclude that Greeks were, in fact, better
off under the Sultan. The present object of the Porte in the government of its subjects of every
race & religion is at present to confer on them the largest measure of self government that can be
combined with efficient police, and equitable administration of justice, Finlay wrote admiringly.
Indeed, he continued, the Porte has conceded to its Christian subjects a much greater
control over their local and provincial affairs than is enjoyed by the inhabitants of the great
continental empires of Europe. On the other hand,
the greek governmentdo not make it their principle object to introduce into the hellenic
Kingdom local institutions and material improvements in harmony with the conditions &
wants of the population but they employ themselves and the finances of their country in
raising up obstacles to every improvement in the condition of the greek subjects of
Turkey[,] who are growing richer & wiser much more rapidly than the subjects of the
hellenic government.24
The Greece Finlay had fought for had become an unsalvageable. In forty years, it had failed to
become a Western or European state. The Ottoman Empire was a better guarantor of Greek
prosperity. It manifested self government and equitablejustice, and fought oriental
Greek rebels on Crete. On second glance, it appeared the more Western entity by far.
This conclusion may have had repercussions beyond Finlays lifetime, which ended in
1875. In the late 1870s, the British Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone would make
Ottoman atrocities against Bulgarian nationalists the centerpiece of his election campaign.
Benjamin Disraelis Conservative government, he charged, had placed Britains strategic alliance
with the Ottoman Empire above humanitarian concern. Gladstones accusations raise the
question of why similar charges, levelled against the Ottomans conduct during the 1866
24
Tract on Greco-Turkish relations in Letters, 840.
lxxiv
insurrection in Crete, went unpunished. Ann Pottinger Saab has suggested that Finlays
extreme castigation of Greece during this period demonstrated that it was incapable of replacing
the Ottoman Empire as guardian of Britains sacred pathway to India through the eastern
Mediterranean,25 pointing to another episode in which Finlays influence played a role.
Saab, however, only discusses Finlays characterizations of Greece, and not of its
Ottoman foe. There is reason to believe that Finlays suggestion that the Ottoman state was the
more Western one played a role in maintaining British support for the empire as well. As the
sole British correspondent in Greece, communicating through one of Britains most influential
newspapers, his influence was at its height. If this is true, it underscores the weight such
significations as East and West have held in international politics and how fickle these
categories have been.26
25
Ann Pottinger Saab, The Doctors Dilemma: Britain and the Cretan Crisis 1866-69, The Journal of Modern
History 49, no. 4, (December 1977): D1383-D1407.
26
I am not suggesting that Finlay helped foment such a realization in the British body politic or that he was truly
decisive, even, in upholding the Ottoman alliance. Nevertheless, Saab makes a good case that Finlay played some
role isolating the empire from humanitarian criticism, and, at the very least, the shift in his own thoughts and
written words provide evidence of a less than airtight discourse of what East and West connoted.
lxxv
Epilogue: Which Way West?

This thesis has demonstrated how many believed that Greece could, or should, move
between cultural categories over the course of the 19th century. Among the Westernization
schemes then proposed for Greece, however, George Finlays sticks out for its tenacity, its
complexity, and its singular influence. Finlay retained his faith in the countrys potential far
longer than his Philhellene contemporaries, integrating their theories, rewriting Greeces history,
and becoming the countrys spokesperson in Britain, then the worlds most powerful state. He
helped advance the liberal notion of British democracy as Athenian, and used this concept to
define the mission of British policy toward Greece as a re-gifting of classical
constitutionalism. He upheld the Greek constitution of 1864 and the regime change that
accompanied it. Finally, his later disillusionment with Greece may have contributed to Britains
continued support for the Ottoman Empire, and relegation of Greece to the Near East.
One basic question remains: what, for Finlay, constituted the West? In Chapter Two, I
suggested that Finlays earliest concern with Greeces Westernization stemmed from his desire
to see the country materially prosper, in order to maintain his lifestyle abroad. Was his West
defined simply by wealth? Miller thought so. Finlay, he concluded, was a political economist
lxxvi
1
and materialist who failed to understand the sentimental side of Greek nationality. Yet
Finlays engagement with many political ideas linked to Greeces history and culture suggests
otherwise. As Chapter Four demonstrates, Finlays rhetoric of Westernization ceased as soon
as constitutional reform failed to bring about material progress. When he began to search for
other means of improving the Greek economy, Finlay looked toward methods being employed
across todays Middle East in extra-European territories indirectly colonized by the
European Great Powers. Yet it was only when Greeks appeared to actively abandon the cause of
material progress for the pursuit of the Megali Idea that Finlay fully gave them up as oriental.
It appears that, for Finlay, a state that was, alone, organized and materially prosperous was not
fully oriental. Far more, however, was required for it to move into Europe or the West,
some kind of expressly political or philosophical shift. Finlay advocated the expansion of Greece
was worthwhile, or termed the Ottoman Empire occidental, only when either state appeared to
express such ideas as self government or justice.
This is hardly a revelatory or surprising conclusion, however. Similar ideas East as
the home of despotic and arbitrary rule, West the realm of individuality and law had been
held in Europe for some time, and have been adequately surveyed in, among other places,
Edward Saids landmark work, Orientalism.21 As I have shown, moreover, Finlays idea of
Westernization was heavily influenced by the intellectual luminaries of his day Humboldt,
Byron, Bentham, Mill, and others. Defining the West is not the purpose of this thesis, but
rather, to show how it was defined. Finlay shifted the discourse of Greeces Westernization
from a debilitating focus on the juxtaposition between antique Athens and the present day. He
recovered elements of West from the long course of Greek history, and found some of them in
1
21
William Miller, George Finlay as a Journalist, The English Historical Review 39, no. 156. (October 1924): 556.
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978).
lxxvii
the Ottoman Empire as well. His writings suggest a difficulty fixing the parameters of
East and West, and his influence suggests that, in the 19th century, the position of Greece
relative to East and West went unresolved.
Hence, George Finlay reconceived Greece in time and space, in history books and
cultural categorizations. He helped define Greece as Eastern, he demonstrated that it was
capable of becoming Western, and then reneged, asserting that the Ottoman Empire was nearer
to the West than Greece would be any time soon. Due to his influence over the British
government, Finlay also reshaped Greece. Partly because Finlay inspired confidence in Greeces
ability to Westernize, Britain did not interfere in its two 19th century revolutions. Subsequently,
Greece became, imperfections aside, a more democratic state. Finlays later privileging of the
more occidental Ottoman Empire may have also influenced the British governments
sympathies toward Constantinople. George Finlays redefinitions of East and West demonstrate
these concepts fluidity, and British actions following upon them demonstrate the weighty
political consequences such redefinitions may imply.
lxxviii
Appendix
Schematic of Westernization schemes for 19th century Greece
The early Philhellenes believed that Greek antiquity would flourish once again after the end of Ottoman rule (1).
Benthamites attempted to import abstract theories of bureaucratic administration to reform the country (2).
According to Finlay, the Bavarian regency that later ruled the country relied on both, to little avail. He sought
instead to revive specific (essential) elements of Greeces antique past that had had survived the millennia since
lxxix
the Roman conquest, and located these in local, participatory governance. This, he claimed, was still extant in
democratic Britain, which had inherited it from ancient Greece. Britain, then, was the perfect state to awaken
Greeces essential Western character (3).
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Finlays Works
Finlay, George, with 1877 ed. by Reverend H. F. Tozer, A History of Greece from its
Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time: B. C. 146 To A. D. 1864. Volume VI: The
Greek Revolution, Part I: A. D. 1821 - 1827. New York: AMS Press, 1970.
Finlay, George, with 1877 ed. by Reverend H. F. Tozer, A History of Greece from its
Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time: B. C. 146 To A. D. 1864. Volume VII: The
Greek Revolution, Part II: Establishment of the Greek Kingdom. New York: AMS Press,
1970.
Hussey, J. M., ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume I: The Journals.
Athens: Porphyrogenitus, 1995.
Hussey, J. M., ed., The Journals and Letters of George Finlay. Volume II: Finlay-Leake and
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Unsigned, The Actual Condition of the Greek State, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine
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Unsigned, Greece Again Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine 67, no. 415 (May 1850): 526.
Unsigned, King Otho and His Classic Kingdom, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine 76, no.
468 (October 1854): 405.
lxxx
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87

Introduction Defining Greece in Time and Space

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GEORGE FINLAYS GREECE:

BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Defining Greece in Time and Space

Which Way West?

Schematic of Westernization Schemes for Greece

Athens by J. C. Hobhouse (1813)

The Upper Bazaar of Athens by Edward

The Expulsion of King Otto (colour lithograph,

Session of the Parliament, with Harilaos Trikoupis

Greece is East, West is Best: Cultural Categorization to 1842

In the 18 century, a new conception of Greece, as the birthplace of Western

Also referred to as neoclassicism or Neo-Hellenism.

Enter George Finlay

Setting the Stage

Miller, Papers, 391.

Dilettanti Amid Devastation: Early Travellers to Greece

Bernal, Black Athena, 285.

The Byronic Turn

Heyer, Das philhellenische Argument in Rezeption der Antike, 86.

War to the Death: The High Tide of Philhellenism

Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 41.

Profiteers and Political Scientists: The London Greek Committee

Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 77.

Woodhouse, Philhellenes, 78-79.

Entry of 1 January 1833 in Journals 64.

The Tyranny of Germany over Greece

Entry of 1 July 1830 in Journals 29.

St. Clair, That Greece Might Still be Free, 351.

Stoneman, Land of Lost Gods, 238.

Entry of 21 July 1835 in Journals 150.

The Constitutional Constant of Greek History

Entry of 20 July 1835 in Journals 147.

Entry of 17 November 1835 in Journals 102.

Entry of 29 August 1836 in Journals 113.

Entry of 22 November 1837 in Journals, 120.

Of Balance and Bribery: Problems with the Constitution of 1844

Blackwoods, May 1850, 536-7.

Blackwoods, October 1854, 793.

Resurrecting Local Government

Blackwoods, May 1850, 536.

Blackwoods, May 1850, 531-2.

Finlay, History VII, 178.

From Greek Liberty in Britain to British Liberty for Greece

Blackwoods, October 1854, 420.

Blackwoods, October 1854, 413.

Given his disapproval of French constitutionalism, as a form of abstract political principle

Blackwoods, October 1854, 421; my italics.

A Revolution Toward Britishness? Finlays Influence and the Events of 1862-3

Robson, Letters of Mill, 812.

Debate of 15 August 1843 in Hansards 3, LXXI, 795.

Finlay, History VII, 285.

Chapter IV. The Re-Orientalization of Greece, 1864-1875

The Limits of Legislation

Finlay to C. T. Netwon, 7 December 1865, in Letters, 823.

Oriental Irredentists, Occidental Ottomans?

Finlay to the Times, 21 March 1867, in Letters 829-30.

Tract on Greco-Turkish relations in Letters, 838-9. Emphasis added.

Tract on Greco-Turkish relations in Letters, 840.

Epilogue: Which Way West?

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